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Kirill Melnikov

Publications and source records attributed to Kirill Melnikov.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources
arXiv2015

QCD corrections to ZZ production in gluon fusion at the LHC

We compute the next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the production of two Z-bosons in the annihilation of two gluons at the LHC. Being enhanced by a large gluon flux, these corrections provide distinct and, potentially, the dominant part of the N$^3$LO QCD contributions to Z-pair production in proton collisions. The $gg \to ZZ$ annihilation is a loop-induced process that receives the dominant contribution from loops of five light quarks, that are included in our computation in the massless approximation. We find that QCD corrections increase the $gg \to ZZ$ production cross section by ${\cal O}(50\%-100\%)$ depending on the values of the renormalization and factorization scales used in the leading order computation, and the collider energy. The large corrections to $gg \to ZZ$ channel increase the $pp \to ZZ$ cross section by about six to eight percent, exceeding the estimated theoretical uncertainty of the recent NNLO QCD calculation.

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arXiv2015

Fiducial cross sections for Higgs boson production in association with a jet at next-to-next-to-leading order in QCD

We extend the recent computation of Higgs boson production in association with a jet through next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative QCD by including decays of the Higgs boson to electroweak vector bosons. This allows us to compute fiducial cross sections and kinematic distributions including realistic selection criteria for the Higgs boson decay products. As an illustration, we present results for $pp \to H + j \to γγ+ j$ closely following the ATLAS 8 TeV analysis and for $pp \to H+ j \to W W + j \to e^+ μ^- ν\bar ν+ j $ in a CMS-like 13 TeV setup.

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arXiv2015

Higgs boson production in association with a jet at next-to-next-to-leading order

We present precise predictions for Higgs boson production in association with a jet. Our calculation is accurate to next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) QCD in the Higgs Effective Field Theory and constitutes the first complete NNLO computation for Higgs production with a final-state jet in hadronic collisions. We include all relevant phenomenological channels and present fully-differential results as well as total cross sections for the LHC. Our NNLO predictions reduce the unphysical scale dependence by more than a factor of two and enhance the total rate by about twenty percent compared to NLO QCD predictions. Our results demonstrate for the first time satisfactory convergence of the perturbative series.

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arXiv2015

Two-loop helicity amplitudes for the production of two off-shell electroweak bosons in gluon fusion

We compute the part of the two-loop virtual amplitude for the process $gg \to V_1 V_2 \to (l_1 \bar l'_{1}) (l_2 \bar l'_2)$, where $V_{1,2}$ are arbitrary electroweak gauge bosons, that receives contributions from loops of massless quarks. Invariant masses of electroweak bosons are allowed to be different from each other. Our result provides an important ingredient for improving the description of gluon fusion contribution to the production of four-lepton final states at the LHC.

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arXiv2015

Two-loop helicity amplitudes for the production of two off-shell electroweak bosons in quark-antiquark collisions

Knowledge of two-loop QCD amplitudes for processes $q\bar q \to V_1 V_2 \to (l_1\bar l'_1)(l_2 \bar l'_2)$ is important for improving the theoretical description of four-lepton production in hadron collisions. In this paper we compute these helicity amplitudes for all intermediate vector bosons, $V_1 V_2 = γ^*γ^*, WW, ZZ, WZ, W γ^*$, including off-shell effects and decays to leptons.

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arXiv2015

Non-planar master integrals for the production of two off-shell vector bosons in collisions of massless partons

We present the calculation of all non-planar master integrals that are needed to describe production of two off-shell vector bosons in collisions of two massless partons through NNLO in perturbative QCD. The integrals are computed analytically using differential equations in external kinematic variables and expressed in terms of Goncharov polylogarithms. These results provide the last missing ingredient needed for the computation of two-loop amplitudes that describe the production of two gauge bosons with different invariant masses in hadron collisions.

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arXiv2015

Production of two Z-bosons in gluon fusion in the heavy top quark approximation

We compute QCD radiative corrections to the continuum production of a pair of Z-bosons in the annihilation of two gluons. We only consider the contribution of the top quark loops and we treat them assuming that $m_t$ is much larger than any other kinematic invariant in the problem. We estimate the QCD corrections to $pp \to ZZ$ using the first non-trivial term in the expansion in the inverse top quark mass and we compare them to QCD corrections of the signal process, $pp \to H \to ZZ$.

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arXiv2014

Virtual corrections to Higgs boson pair production in the large top quark mass limit

We calculate the three-loop matching coefficient $C_{HH}$, required for a consistent description of Higgs boson pair production in gluon fusion through next-to-next-to-leading order QCD in the heavy top quark approximation. We also compute the $gg \to HH$ amplitude in $m_t \to \infty$ approximation in the full theory and show its consistency with an earlier computation in heavy-top effective theory.

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arXiv2014

On the NNLO QCD corrections to single-top production at the LHC

We present a fully-differential calculation of the NNLO QCD corrections to the t-channel mechanism for producing single top quarks at the LHC. We work in the structure function approximation, computing QCD corrections to the light- and heavy-quark lines separately and neglecting the dynamical cross-talk between the two. The neglected contribution, which appears at NNLO for the first time, is color-suppressed and is expected to be sub-dominant. Within this approximation, we find that, for the total cross section, NNLO QCD corrections are in the few percent range and, therefore, are comparable to NLO QCD corrections. We also find that the scale independence of the theoretical prediction for single-top production improves significantly once NNLO QCD corrections are included. Furthermore, we show how these results change if a cut on the transverse momentum of the top quark is applied and derive the NNLO QCD prediction for the ratio of single top and single anti-top production cross sections at the 8 TeV LHC.

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arXiv2014

Remarks on the effect of bound states and threshold in g-2

Recently, the contribution of positronium bound states to the electron anomalous magnetic moment was computed in Refs.[1,2]. It was argued there that this O(alpha^5) contribution is missed if electron g-2 is calculated within conventional perturbative QED and, as such, it must be added to the perturbative five-loop result. We show that this conclusion is flawed and that no additional contributions to g-2 are generated in QED beyond the perturbation theory.

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arXiv2014

Muon decay spin asymmetry

We compute the spin asymmetry of the muon decay through O(alpha^2) in perturbative QED. These two-loop corrections are about a factor five (twenty) smaller than the current statistical (systematic) uncertainty of the most precise measurement, performed by the TWIST collaboration. We point out that at O(alpha^2) the asymmetry requires a careful definition due to multi-lepton final states and suggest to use familiar QCD techniques to define it in an infra-red safe way. We find that the TWIST measurement of the asymmetry is in excellent agreement with the Standard Model.

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arXiv2014

Two-loop planar master integrals for the production of off-shell vector bosons in hadron collisions

We describe the calculation of all planar master integrals that are needed for the computation of NNLO QCD corrections to the production of two off-shell vector bosons in hadron collisions. The most complicated representatives of integrals in this class are the two-loop four-point functions where two external lines are on the light-cone and two other external lines have different invariant masses. We compute these and other relevant integrals analytically using differential equations in external kinematic variables and express our results in terms of Goncharov polylogarithms. The case of two equal off-shellnesses, recently considered in Ref. [1], appears as a particular case of our general solution.

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arXiv2014

On the spin and parity of a single-produced resonance at the LHC

The experimental determination of the properties of the newly discovered boson at the Large Hadron Collider is currently the most crucial task in high energy physics. We show how information about the spin, parity, and, more generally, the tensor structure of the boson couplings can be obtained by studying angular and mass distributions of events in which the resonance decays to pairs of gauge bosons, $ZZ, WW$, and $γγ$. A complete Monte Carlo simulation of the process $pp \to X \to VV \to 4f$ is performed and verified by comparing it to an analytic calculation of the decay amplitudes $X \to VV \to 4f$. Our studies account for all spin correlations and include general couplings of a spin $J=0,1,2$ resonance to Standard Model particles. We also discuss how to use angular and mass distributions of the resonance decay products for optimal background rejection. It is shown that by the end of the 8 TeV run of the LHC, it might be possible to separate extreme hypotheses of the spin and parity of the new boson with a confidence level of 99% or better for a wide range of models. We briefly discuss the feasibility of testing scenarios where the resonances is not a parity eigenstate.

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arXiv2014

Constraining anomalous HVV interactions at proton and lepton colliders

In this paper, we study the extent to which CP parity of a Higgs boson, and more generally its anomalous couplings to gauge bosons, can be measured at the LHC and a future electron-positron collider. We consider several processes, including Higgs boson production in gluon and weak boson fusion and production of a Higgs boson in association with an electroweak gauge boson. We consider decays of a Higgs boson including $ZZ, WW, γγ$, and $Z γ$. Matrix element approach to three production and decay topologies is developed and applied in the analysis. A complete Monte Carlo simulation of the above processes at proton and $e^+e^-$ colliders is performed and verified by comparing it to an analytic calculation. Prospects for measuring various tensor couplings at existing and proposed facilities are compared.

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arXiv2013

Constraining the Higgs boson width with ZZ production at the LHC

We point out that existing measurements of $pp \to ZZ$ cross-section at the LHC in a broad range of ZZ invariant masses allow one to derive a model-independent upper bound on the Higgs boson width, thanks to strongly enhanced off-shell Higgs contribution. Using CMS data and considering events in the interval of ZZ invariant masses from 100 to 800 GeV, we find $Γ_H \le 38.8 \times Γ_H^{SM} \approx 163$ MeV, at the $95\%$ confidence level. Restricting ZZ invariant masses to $M_{ZZ} \ge 300$ GeV range, we estimate that this bound can be improved to $Γ_H \le 21 \times Γ_H^{SM} \approx 88$ MeV. Under the assumption that all couplings of the Higgs boson to Standard Model particles scale in a universal way, our result can be translated into an upper limit on the branching fraction of the Higgs boson decay to invisible final states. We obtain $Br(H \to inv) < 0.84 (0.78)$, depending on the range of ZZ invariant masses that are used to constrain the width. We believe that an analysis along these lines should be performed by experimental collaborations in the near future and also in the run II of the LHC. We estimate that such analyses can, eventually, be sensitive to the Higgs boson width as small as $Γ_H \sim 10 \times Γ_H^{SM}$.

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arXiv2013

Signal-background interference effects for $gg \to H \to W^+ W^-$ beyond leading order

We study the effect of QCD corrections to the $gg\to H\to W^+ W^-$ signal-background interference at the LHC for a heavy Higgs boson. We construct a soft-collinear approximation to the NLO and NNLO corrections for the background process, which is exactly known only at LO. We estimate its accuracy by constructing and comparing the same approximation to the exact result for the signal process, which is known up to NNLO, and we conclude that we can describe the signal-background interference to better than ten percent accuracy. We show that our result implies that, in practice, a fairly good approximation to higher-order QCD corrections to the interference may also be obtained by rescaling the known LO result by a K-factor computed using the signal process.

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arXiv2013

On the Higgs boson pair production at the LHC

We compute the production cross section of a pair of Standard Model Higgs bosons at the LHC at next-to-leading order in QCD, including corrections in inverse powers of the top quark mass. We calculate these power corrections through ${\cal O}(1/M_t^8)$ and study their relevance for phenomenology of the double Higgs production. We find that power corrections are significant, even for moderate values of partonic center-of-mass energies, and that convergence of the $1/M_t$ expansion can be dramatically improved by factorizing the leading order cross section with full $M_t$-dependence.

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