Mixed QCD-electroweak corrections to pp → lνl + X at the LHC

We consider the hadroproduction of a massive charged lepton plus the corresponding neutrino through the Drell-Yan mechanism. We present a new computation of the mixed QCD-electroweak (EW) corrections to this process. The cancellation of soft and collinear singularities is achieved by using a formulation of the q(T) subtraction formalism derived from the next-to-next-to-leading-order QCD calculation for heavy-quark production. For the first time, all the real and virtual contributions due to initial- and final-state radiation are consistently included without any approximation, except for the finite part of the two-loop virtual correction, which is computed in the pole approximation and suitably improved through a reweighting procedure. We demonstrate that our calculation is reliable in both on-shell and off-shell regions, thereby providing the first prediction of the mixed QCD-EW corrections in the entire region of the lepton transverse momentum. The computed corrections are in qualitative agreement with what we obtain in a factorized approach of QCD and EW corrections. At large values of the lepton p(T), the mixed QCD-EW corrections are negative and increase in size, to about -20% with respect to the next-to-leading-order QCD result at p(T) = 500 GeV.

Automated summary

In this study, the mixed QCD-electroweak corrections to hadroproduction of a massive charged lepton and the corresponding neutrino through the Drell-Yan mechanism are computed for the first time. The cancellation of soft and collinear singularities is achieved, and real and virtual contributions are consistently included without approximation. The calculated corrections show qualitative agreement with a factorized approach and exhibit negative trends at large lepton transverse momenta, reaching about -20% at p(T) = 500 GeV compared to the next-to-leading-order QCD result.