Abstract
We perform a study of lepton-pair production in association with bottom quarks at the LHC based on the predictions obtained at next-to-leading order in QCD, both at fixed order and matched with a QCD parton shower. We consider a comprehensive set of observables and estimate the associated theoretical uncertainties by studying the dependence on the perturbative QCD scales (renormalisation, factorisation and shower) and by comparing different parton-shower models (Pythia8 and Herwig++) and matching schemes (MC@NLO and POWHEG). Based on these results, we propose a simple procedure to include bottom-quark effects in neutral-current Drell-Yan production, going beyond the standard massless approximation. Focusing on the inclusive lepton-pair transverse-momentum distribution \( {p}_{\perp}^{\ell^{+}\ell -} \), we quantify the impact of such effects on the tuning of the simulation of charged-current Drell-Yan observables and the W-boson mass determination.
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Bagnaschi, E., Maltoni, F., Vicini, A. et al. Lepton-pair production in association with a \( b\overline{b} \) pair and the determination of the W boson mass. J. High Energ. Phys. 2018, 101 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP07(2018)101
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP07(2018)101