Normalizing weak boson pair production at the Large Hadron Collider

Abstract

The production of two weak bosons at the Large Hadron Collider will be one of the most important sources of standard model backgrounds for final states with multiple leptons. In this paper we consider several quantities that can help normalize the production of weak boson pairs. Ratios of inclusive cross sections for production of two weak bosons and Drell-Yan are investigated and the corresponding theoretical errors are evaluated. The possibility of predicting the jet veto survival probability of $VV$ production from Drell-Yan data is also considered. Overall, the theoretical errors on all quantities remain less than 5%--20%. The dependence of these quantities on the center of mass energy of the proton-proton collision is also studied.