W ± Z production at hadron colliders in NNLO QCD

We report on the first computation of the next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) QCD corrections to W (+/-) Z production in proton collisions. We consider both the inclusive production of on-shell W (+/-) Z pairs at LHC energies and the total W (+/-) Z rates including off-shell effects of the Wand Z bosons. In the off-shell computation, the invariant mass of the lepton pairs from the Z boson decay is required to be in a given mass window, and the results are compared with the corresponding measurements obtained by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations. The NNLOcorrections range from 8% at root s= 7 TeV to 11% at root s = 14 TeV and significantly improve the agreement with the LHC data at root s = 7 and 8 TeV. (C) 2016 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V.