Abstract
We consider W+W− production in hadronic collisions and present the computation of next-to-next-to-leading order accurate predictions consistently matched to parton showers (NNLO+PS) using the MiNNLOPS method. Spin correlations, interferences and off-shell effects are included by calculating the full process pp → e+νeμ− overline{nu} μ. This is the first NNLO+PS calculation for W+W− production that does not require an a-posteriori multi-differential reweighting. The evaluation time of the two-loop contribution has been reduced by more than one order of magnitude through a four-dimensional cubic spline interpolation. We find good agreement with the inclusive and fiducial cross sections measured by ATLAS and CMS. Both NNLO corrections and matching to parton showers are important for an accurate simulation of the W+W− signal, and their matching provides the best description of fully exclusive W+W− events to date.
Highlights
All-order predictions for the W +W − process have been obtained for various observables using state-of-the-art resummation techniques: threshold resummation at next-to-leading order (NLO)+NNLL was presented in ref. [129], b-space resummation was used to obtain the next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO)+NNLL transverse momentum spectrum of the W +W − pair [130] and the NNLO+NNLL jet-vetoed cross section was computed in ref
While the NNLO corrections compared to MiNLO are relatively flat for yWW, we find that the corrections increase substantially at larger values of ∆yW−, W+, reaching ∼ +30% for yWW 3
In this paper we have presented the matching of NNLO-accurate predictions with parton showers for W +W − production at the LHC using the MiNNLOPS method
Summary
The consistent removal of the top-quark contamination is mandatory to define a top-free W +W − cross section To this end, we exploit the four-flavour scheme (4FS), where bottom quarks are treated as being massive, do not enter in the initial state and diagrams with real bottom-quark radiation are separately finite. We exploit the four-flavour scheme (4FS), where bottom quarks are treated as being massive, do not enter in the initial state and diagrams with real bottom-quark radiation are separately finite This allows us to drop all contributions with final-state bottom quarks, thereby cancelling the top-quark contamination and obtaining top-free W +W − results. For the sake of simplicity, the easier 4FS approach is employed throughout this paper
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