Abstract
We present a new calculation of next-to-leading-order corrections of the strong and electroweak interactions to like-sign W-boson scattering at the Large Hadron Collider, implemented in the Monte Carlo integrator Bonsay. The calculation includes leptonic decays of the W bosons. It comprises the whole tower of next-to-leading-order contributions to the cross section, which scale like \( {\alpha}_{\textrm{s}}^3 \)α4, \( {\alpha}_{\textrm{s}}^2 \)α5, αsα6, and α7 in the strong and electroweak couplings αs and α. We present a detailed survey of numerical results confirming the occurrence of large pure electroweak corrections of the order of ~ −12% for integrated cross sections and even larger corrections in high-energy tails of distributions. The electroweak corrections account for the major part of the complete next-to-leading-order correction, which amounts to 15–20% in size, depending on the details of the event selection chosen for analysing vector-boson-scattering. Moreover, we compare the full next-to-leading-order corrections to approximate results based on the neglect of contributions that are not enhanced by the vector-boson scattering kinematics (VBS approximation) and on resonance expansions for the W-boson decays (double-pole approximation); the quality of this approximation is good within ≲ 1.5% for integrated cross sections and the dominating parts of the differential distributions. Finally, for the leading-order predictions, we construct different versions of effective vector-boson approximations, which are based on cross-section contributions that are enhanced by collinear emission of W bosons off the initial-state (anti)quarks; in line with previous findings in the literature, it turns out that the approximative quality is rather limited for applications at the LHC.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Ansgar Denner, Sandro Uccirati, and Mathieu Pellen for their help in the comparison to results from MoCaNLO/Recola and Olivier Mattelaer for fruitful discussions on the EVA. S.D. and C.S. acknowledge support by the DFG through grant DI 784/3. Moreover, C.S. is supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) under reference number DE 623/6-2. R.W. acknowledges support by FRS-FNRS (Belgian National Scientific Research Fund) IISN projects 4.4503.16. The authors acknowledge support by the state of Baden-Württemberg through bwHPC and the DFG through grant no INST 39/963-1 FUGG. Additional computational resources have been provided by the supercomputing facilities of the Université catholique de Louvain (CISM/UCL) and the Consortium des Équipements de Calcul Intensif en Fédération Wallonie Bruxelles (CÉCI) funded by the Fond de la Recherche Scientifique de Belgique (F.R.S.-FNRS) under convention 2.5020.11 and by the Walloon Region.
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Dittmaier, S., Maierhöfer, P., Schwan, C. et al. Like-sign W-boson scattering at the LHC — approximations and full next-to-leading-order predictions. J. High Energ. Phys. 2023, 22 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP11(2023)022
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP11(2023)022