On electroweak corrections to neutral current Drell–Yan with the POWHEG BOX

Abstract

Motivated by the requirement of a refined and flexible treatment of electroweak corrections to the neutral current Drell–Yan process, we report on recent developments on various input parameter/renormalization schemes for the calculation of fully differential cross sections, including both on-shell and MS¯\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$\\overline{ \\mathrm MS}$$\\end{document} schemes. The latter are particularly interesting for direct determinations of running couplings at the highest LHC energies. The calculations feature next-to-leading order precision with additional higher order contributions from universal corrections such as Δα\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$\\varDelta \\alpha $$\\end{document} and Δρ\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$\\varDelta \\rho $$\\end{document}. All the discussed input parameter/renormalization scheme options are implemented in the package of POWHEG-BOX-V2 dedicated to the neutral current Drell–Yan simulation, i.e. Z_ew-BMNNPV, which is used to obtain the presented numerical results. In particular, a comprehensive analysis on physical observables calculated with different input parameter/renormalization schemes is presented, addressing the Z peak invariant mass region as well as the high energy window. We take the opportunity of reporting also on additional improvements and options introduced in the package Z_ew-BMNNPV after svn revision 3376, such as different options for the treatment of the hadronic contribution to the running of the electromagnetic coupling and for the handling of the unstable Z resonance.