Polarization Observables in WZ Production at the 13 TeV LHC: Inclusive Case

Abstract

We present a study of the polarization observables of the W and Z bosons in the process pp → W ± Z → e ± ν e µ + µ − at the 13 TeV Large Hadron Collider. The calculation is performed at next-to-leading order, including the full QCD corrections as well as the electroweak corrections, the latter being calculated in the double-pole approximation. The results are presented in the helicity coordinate system adopted by ATLAS and for different inclusive cuts on the di-muon invariant mass. We define left-right charge asymmetries related to the polarization fractions between the W + Z and W − Z channels and we find that these asymmetries are large and sensitive to higher-order effects. Similar findings are also presented for charge asymmetries related to a P-even angular coefficient.

Polarized electroweak bosons in W+W− production at the LHC including NLO QCD effects

“…The results for W ± Z production in ref. [18] show that angular distributions and polarization observables are mildly modified by NLO EW corrections for what concerns the W boson in an inclusive setup. We therefore expect similar results in JHEP09(2020)164 W-pair production, at least in the absence of lepton cuts.…”

“…[14,15] using the PHANTOM Monte Carlo [16]. Recently, fiducial polarization observables have been analysed in fully leptonic W ± Z production including next-to-leading (NLO) QCD and EW corrections both in a realistic LHC environment [17] and in an inclusive setup [18]. In particular, angular coefficients that can be extracted analytically from unpolarized distributions are directly related to the polarization fractions in the absence of lepton cuts.…”

NNLO QCD study of polarised W+W− production at the LHC

“…Seminal papers covered the V +j process [1,2]. Later on other processes were considered, such as diboson production [3][4][5][6], vector boson scattering (VBS) [7][8][9]. Topquark decays are currently under investigation.…”

NLO EW and QCD corrections to polarized ZZ production in the four-charged-lepton channel at the LHC

“…[66,68]. More recently, a study of polarization-sensitive coefficients has been performed for W ± Z inclusive production [69,70]. The separation of polarization states at the amplitude level at leading order (LO) has been automated and investigated in vector-boson scattering [71][72][73] with the PHANTOM Monte Carlo [74] and in Higgs decays to four leptons [53,54].…”