arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to S. Dittmaier.
Top-quark pair production with an additional jet is an important signal and background process at the LHC. We present the next-to-leading order QCD calculation for this process and show results for integrated as well as differential cross sections.
This report summarizes the activities of the NLM working group of the Workshop "Physics at TeV Colliders", Les Houches, France, 11-29 June, 2007.
Report of the Working Group on Higgs Bosons for the Workshop, ``Physics at TeV Colliders'', Les Houches, France, 11-29 June, 2007.
We report on the calculation of the next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the production of W-boson pairs in association with a hard jet at the Tevatron and the LHC, which is an important source of background for Higgs and new-physics searches. The corrections stabilize the leading-order prediction for the cross section considerably, in particular if a veto against the emission of a second hard jet is applied.
PROPHECY4f is a Monte Carlo event generator for precise simulations of the Higgs-boson decay H -> WW/ZZ -> 4fermions, supporting leptonic, semileptonic, and four-quark final states. Both electroweak and QCD corrections are included. Treating the intermediate gauge bosons as resonances, the calculation covers the full Higgs-boson mass range above, near, and below the gauge-boson pair thresholds. In this article we pay particular attention to the recently implemented option of PROPHECY4f to generate unweighted events.
Radiative corrections of strong and electroweak interactions are presented at next-to-leading order for the production of a Higgs boson plus two hard jets via weak interactions at the LHC. The calculation includes all weak-boson fusion and quark-antiquark annihilation diagrams as well as the corresponding interferences. The electroweak corrections, which are discussed here for the first time, reduce the cross sections by 5%, and thus are of the same order of magnitude as the QCD corrections. As argued in previous papers, where s-channel diagrams and interferences were neglected, the QCD corrections connected to interference effects are small.
The top quark and electroweak bosons (W and Z) represent the most massive fundamental particles yet discovered, and as such refer directly to the Standard Model's greatest remaining mystery: the mechanism by which all particles gained mass. This report summarizes the work done within the top-ew group of the Tevatron-for-LHC workshop. It represents a collection of both Tevatron results, and LHC predictions. The hope is that by considering and comparing both machines, the LHC program can be improved and aided by knowledge from the Tevatron, and that particle physics as a whole can be enriched. The report includes measurements of the top quark mass, searches for single top quark production, and physics of the electroweak bosons at hadron colliders.
We report on the calculation of the next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the production of top--anti-top quark pairs in association with a hard jet at the Tevatron and at the LHC. We present results for the t tbar + jet cross section and the forward--backward charge asymmetry. The corrections stabilize the leading-order prediction for the cross section. The charge asymmetry receives large corrections.
The radiative corrections of the strong and electroweak interactions are calculated for the Higgs-boson decays H -> WW/ZZ -> 4f with semileptonic or hadronic four-fermion final states in next-to-leading order. This calculation is improved by higher-order corrections originating from heavy-Higgs-boson effects and photonic final-state radiation off charged leptons. The W- and Z-boson resonances are treated within the complex-mass scheme, i.e. without any resonance expansion or on-shell approximation. The calculation essentially follows our previous study of purely leptonic final states. The electroweak corrections are similar for all four-fermion final states; for integrated quantities they amount to some per cent and increase with growing Higgs-boson mass M_H, reaching 7-8% at M_H \sim 500 GeV. For distributions, the corrections are somewhat larger and, in general, distort the shapes. Among the QCD corrections, which include corrections to interference contributions of the Born diagrams, only the corrections to the squared Born diagrams turn out to be relevant. These contributions can be attributed to the gauge-boson decays, i.e. they approximately amount to α_s/πfor semileptonic final states and 2α_s/πfor hadronic final states. The discussed corrections have been implemented in the Monte Carlo event generator PROPHECY4F.
Extending earlier work, we provide predictions obtained with the Monte Carlo generator PROPHECY4f for the decays H-->ZZ/WW-->4l including the complete electroweak O(alpha) corrections and some higher-order improvements. The gauge-boson resonances are described in the complex-mass scheme. Here, particular attention is paid to a comparison of different final states with identical charges, such as e+e-mu+mu- and mu+mu-mu+mu-.
The decay of the Standard Model Higgs boson into four leptons via a virtual W-boson or Z-boson pair is one of the most important decay modes in the Higgs-boson search at the LHC. We present the complete electroweak radiative corrections of O(α) to these processes, including improvements beyond O(α) originating from heavy-Higgs effects and final-state radiation. The intermediate W- and Z-boson resonances are described (without any expansion or on-shell approximation) by consistently employing complex mass parameters for the gauge bosons (complex-mass scheme). The corrections to partial decay widths typically amount to some per cent and increase with growing Higgs mass M_H, reaching about 8% at M_H \sim 500 GeV. For not too large Higgs masses (M_H <\sim 400 GeV) the corrections to the partial decay widths can be reproduced within <\sim 2% by simple approximations. For angular distributions the corrections are somewhat larger and distort the shapes. For invariant-mass distributions of fermion pairs they can reach several tens of per cent depending on the treatment of photon radiation. The discussed corrections have been implemented in a Monte Carlo event generator called PROPHECY4F.
Perturbative calculations with unstable particles require the inclusion of their finite decay widths. A convenient, universal scheme for this purpose is the complex-mass scheme. It fully respects gauge-invariance, is straight-forward to apply, and has been successfully used for the calculation of various tree-level processes and of the electroweak radiative corrections to e+ e- -> 4f and H -> 4f.
This Report summarises the activities of the "SM and Higgs" working group for the Workshop "Physics at TeV Colliders", Les Houches, France, 2-20 May, 2005. On the one hand, we performed a variety of experimental and theoretical studies on standard candles (such as W, Z, and ttbar production), treating them either as proper signals of known physics, or as backgrounds to unknown physics; we also addressed issues relevant to those non-perturbative or semi-perturbative ingredients, such as Parton Density Functions and Underlying Events, whose understanding will be crucial for a proper simulation of the actual events taking place in the detectors. On the other hand, several channels for the production of the Higgs, or involving the Higgs, have been considered in some detail. The report is structured into four main parts. The first one deals with Standard Model physics, except the Higgs. A variety of arguments are treated here, from full simulation of processes constituting a background to Higgs production, to studies of uncertainties due to PDFs and to extrapolations of models for underlying events, from small-$x$ issues to electroweak corrections which may play a role in vector boson physics. The second part of the report treats Higgs physics from the point of view of the signal. In the third part, reviews are presented on the current status of multi-leg, next-to-leading order and of next-to-next-to-leading order QCD computations. Finally, the fourth part deals with the use of Monte Carlos for simulation of LHC physics.
The calculation of the full electroweak O(alpha) corrections to the charged-current four-fermion production processes e+e- --> nu_tau tau+ mu- anti-nu_mu, u anti-d mu- anti-nu_mu, and u anti-d s anti-c is briefly reviewed. The calculation is performed using the complex-mass scheme for the gauge-boson resonances. The evaluation of the occurring one-loop tensor integrals, which include 5- and 6-point functions, requires new techniques. The effects of the complete O(alpha) corrections to the total cross section and to the production-angle distribution are discussed and compared to predictions based on the double-pole approximation, revealing that the latter approximation is not sufficient to fully exploit the potential of a future linear collider in an analysis of W-boson pairs at high energies.
We briefly sketch the methods for a numerically stable evaluation of tensor one-loop integrals that have been used in the calculation of the complete electroweak one-loop corrections to $\Pep\Pem\to4 $fermions. In particular, the improvement of the new methods over the conventional Passarino--Veltman reduction is illustrated for some 4-point integrals in the delicate limits of small Gram (and other kinematical) determinants.
We present new methods for the evaluation of one-loop tensor integrals which have been used in the calculation of the complete electroweak one-loop corrections to e+ e- -> 4 fermions. The described methods for 3-point and 4-point integrals are, in particular, applicable in the case where the conventional Passarino-Veltman reduction breaks down owing to the appearance of Gram determinants in the denominator. One method consists of different variants for expanding tensor coefficients about limits of vanishing Gram determinants or other kinematical determinants, thereby reducing all tensor coefficients to the usual scalar integrals. In a second method a specific tensor coefficient with a logarithmic integrand is evaluated numerically, and the remaining coefficients as well as the standard scalar integral are algebraically derived from this coefficient. For 5-point tensor integrals, we give explicit formulas that reduce the corresponding tensor coefficients to coefficients of 4-point integrals with tensor rank reduced by one. Similar formulas are provided for 6-point functions, and the generalization to functions with more internal propagators is straightforward. All the presented methods are also applicable if infrared (soft or collinear) divergences are treated in dimensional regularization or if mass parameters (for unstable particles) become complex.
A previous calculation of electroweak O(alpha) corrections to deep-inelastic neutrino scattering, as e.g. measured by NuTeV and NOMAD, is supplemented by higher-order effects. In detail, we take into account universal two-loop effects from Δαand Δρas well as higher-order final-state photon radiation off muons in the structure function approach. Moreover, we make use of the recently released O(alpha)-improved parton distributions MRST2004QED and identify the relevant QED factorization scheme, which is DIS like. As a technical byproduct, we describe slicing and subtraction techniques for an efficient calculation of a new type of real corrections that are induced by the generated photon distribution. A numerical discussion of the higher-order effects suggests that the remaining theoretical uncertainty from unknown electroweak corrections is dominated by non-universal two-loop effects and is of the order 0.0003 when translated into a shift in sin^2θ_W=1-MW^2/MZ^2. The O(alpha) corrections implicitly included in the parton distributions lead to a shift of about 0.0004.
The O(alpha) electroweak radiative corrections to gamma gamma --> WW --> 4f within the electroweak Standard Model are calculated in double-pole approximation (DPA). Virtual corrections are treated in DPA, and real-photonic corrections are based on complete lowest-order matrix elements for gamma gamma --> 4f+gamma. The radiative corrections are implemented in a Monte Carlo generator called COFFERgammagamma, which optionally includes anomalous triple and quartic gauge-boson couplings in addition and performs a convolution over realistic spectra of the photon beams. A brief survey of numerical results comprises O(alpha) corrections to integrated cross sections as well as to angular and invariant-mass distributions.