Hadronic production of electroweak vector boson pairs at large transverse momentum

Abstract

Production of electroweak vector boson pairs accompanied by a large transverse momentum jet at hadron colliders is calculated to lowest order QCD with emphasis on the p T and invariant mass distribution of the gauge boson pair. Analytic expressions for the matrix elements of all possible processes, including decays of W- and Z-bosons into massless fermion final states, are presented. It is found that these processes represent an important source for gauge boson pair production at the LHC and SSC and also constitute a background to new physics signals at these colliders, such as Higgs tagging or pair production of a fourth charged lepton.