NLO QCD and EW corrections to vector-boson scattering into ZZ at the LHC

Abstract

We present the first calculation of the full next-to-leading-order electroweak and QCD corrections for vector-boson scattering (VBS) into a pair of Z bosons at the LHC. We consider specifically the process $\mathrm{pp}\to {\mathrm{e}}^{+}{\mathrm{e}}^{-}\hat{\mathrm{I}}{¼}^{+}\hat{\mathrm{I}}{¼}^{-}\mathrm{jj}+X$ at orders $\mathcal{O}(\hat{I}{\pm }^7)$ and $\mathcal{O}(\hat{I}{\pm }_s\hat{I}{\pm }^6)$ and take all off-shell and interference contributions into account. Owing to the presence of enhanced Sudakov logarithms, the electroweak corrections amount to $-16\%$ of the leading-order electroweak fiducial cross section and induce significant shape distortions of differential distributions. The QCD corrections on the other hand are larger ($+24\%$) than typical QCD corrections in VBS. This originates from considering the full computation including tri-boson contributions in a rather inclusive phase space. We also provide a leading-order analysis of all contributions to the cross section for $\mathrm{pp}\to {\mathrm{e}}^{+}{\mathrm{e}}^{-}\hat{\mathrm{I}}{¼}^{+}\hat{\mathrm{I}}{¼}^{-}\mathrm{jj}+X$ in a realistic setup.

28 pages, 45 pdf figures, matches the published version