Quantifying quark mass effects at the LHC: a study of $ pp o boverline{b}boverline{b}+X $ at next-to-leading order

摘要

The production of four bottom quarks is an important benchmark channel forHiggs analyses and searches for new physics at the LHC. We report on thecalculation of the next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the process pp -> banti-b b anti-b + X with the HELAC-NLO automated framework, and present resultsfor inclusive cross sections and differential distributions. We discuss theimpact of the higher-order corrections and, in particular, the effect of thebottom quark mass. In addition, we provide an estimate of the theoreticaluncertainty from the variation of the renormalisation and factorisation scalesand the parton distribution functions. The results are obtained with a newsubtraction formalism for real radiation at next-to-leading order, implementedin the HELAC-DIPOLES package.