NLO QCD corrections to pp/p(p)over-bar → WW plus jet plus X including leptonic W-boson decays

We report on the calculation of the next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the production of W-boson pairs in association with a hard jet at the Tevatron and the LHC, which is an important source of background for Higgs and new-physics searches. Leptonic decays of the W bosons are included by applying an improved version of the narrow-width approximation that treats the W bosons as on-shell particles, but keeps the information on the W spin. Contributions from external bottom quarks are neglected, because they are either numerically suppressed or should be attributed to different processes such as Wt or t (t) over bar production. A survey of differential NLO QCD cross sections is provided both for the LHC and the Tevatron. The QCD corrections stabilize the leading-order prediction for the cross section with respect to scale variations. However, the scale dependence of the next-to-leading order results for the LHC is only reduced considerably if a veto against the emission of a second hard jet is applied. In general, the corrections do not simply rescale the differential leading-order cross sections. In particular, their shapes are distorted if an additional energy scale is involved. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.