Fiducial polarization observables in hadronic WZ production: A next-to-leading order QCD+EW study

Abstract

We present a study at next-to-leading-order (NLO) of the process $pp\to W^{\pm }Z\to \ell {\nu }_l{\ell }^{\prime +}{\ell }^{\prime -}$, where $\ell ,{\ell }^{\prime }=e,\mu$, at the Large Hadron Collider. We include the full NLO QCD corrections and the NLO electroweak (EW) corrections in the double-pole approximation. We define eight fiducial polarization coefficients directly constructed from the polar-azimuthal angular distribution of the decay leptons. These coefficients depend strongly on the kinematical cuts on the transverse momentum or rapidity of the individual leptons. Similarly, fiducial polarization fractions are also defined and they can be directly related to the fiducial coefficients. We perform a detailed analysis of the NLO QCD+EW fiducial polarization observables including theoretical uncertainties stemming from the scale variation and parton distribution function uncertainties, using the fiducial phase space defined by the ATLAS and CMS experiments. We provide results in the helicity coordinate system and in the Collins-Soper coordinate system, at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The EW corrections are found to be important in two of the angular coefficients related to the $Z$ boson, irrespective of the kinematical cuts or the coordinate system. Meanwhile, those EW corrections are very small for the $W^{\pm }$ bosons.

Substantial improvement after useful comments from the anonymous referee: Numerical results for the EW corrections to the cross sections and distributions shifted by -5 (-2)% for ATLAS (CMS) cuts after fixing a bug in the momentum assignment in some cut and histogram routines; results for polarization observables marginally affected, hence conclusions for them unchanged; published version

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Cited by in corpus (21)

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• Validity of SMEFT studies of VH and VV Production at NLO
• The emergence of multi-lepton anomalies at the LHC and their compatibility with new physics at the EW scale
• QCD Corrections in SMEFT Fits to $WZ$ and $WW$ Production
• Polarized vector boson scattering in the fully leptonic WZ and ZZ channels at the LHC
• Polarized electroweak bosons in ${\text{W}}^{+}{\text{W}}^{-}$ production at the LHC including NLO QCD effects
• Vector Boson Scattering Processes: Status and Prospects
• NNLO QCD study of polarised $W^{+}{W}^{-}$ production at the LHC
• From angular coefficients to quantum observables: a phenomenological appraisal in di-boson systems
• Unravelling the anomalous gauge boson couplings in $Z{W}^{\pm }$ production at the LHC and the role of spin-$1$ polarizations
• NLO QCD corrections to polarised di-boson production in semi-leptonic final states
• Polarised W+j production at the LHC: a study at NNLO QCD accuracy
• Polarized Z bosons from the decay of a Higgs boson produced in association with two jets at the LHC
• Electroweak corrections to the angular coefficients in finite-$p_T$ $Z$-boson production and dilepton decay
• Amplitude-assisted tagging of longitudinally polarised bosons using wide neural networks
• Electroweak Restoration at the LHC and Beyond: The $Vh$ Channel
• Quantum Entanglement is Quantum: ZZ Production at the LHC
• Studies of the energy dependence of diboson polarization fractions and the Radiation Amplitude Zero effect in WZ production with the ATLAS detector
• NLO EW and QCD corrections to polarized ZZ production in the four-charged-lepton channel at the LHC