Next-to-next-to-leading order QCD corrections to Wbb over line production at the LHC

We compute theoretical predictions for the production of a W boson in association with a bottom-quark pair at hadron colliders at next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in QCD, including the leptonic decay of the W boson, while treating the bottom quark as massless. This calculation constitutes the very first 2 -> 3 process with a massive external particle to be studied at such a perturbative order. We derive an analytic expression for the required two-loop five-particle amplitudes in the leading color approximation employing finite-field methods. Numerical results for the cross section and differential distributions are presented for ffiffithe Large Hadron Collider at p s = 8 TeV. We observe an improvement of the perturbative convergence for the inclusive case and for the prediction with a jet veto upon the inclusion of the NNLO QCD corrections.

Automated summary

We compute the theoretical predictions for the production of a W boson in association with a bottom-quark pair at hadron colliders at NNLO in QCD. We derive an analytic expression for the required two-loop five-particle amplitudes in the leading color approximation employing finite-field methods. Numerical results show an improvement in the perturbative convergence upon inclusion of NNLO QCD corrections.