Next-to-Leading-Order Corrections to Weak Boson Production with a Massive Quark Jet Pair at Hadron Colliders

摘要

We present the calculation of Next-to-Leading-Order Quantum Chromo Dynamicscorrections for the production of a W or Z weak boson associated with a bottomanti-bottom quark pair at hadron colliders (p anti-p, pp to W/Z b anti-b),including the effects of a non-zero bottom-quark mass. We find a considerablereduction of the renormalization and factorization scale dependence of ourresults with respect to Leading-Order calculations. In particular, we study theimpact of the corrections on the total cross section and invariant massdistributions of the bottom anti-bottom quark pair at the Fermilab Tevatroncollider. We perform a detailed comparison with a calculation that considersmassless bottom quarks and find significant deviations in regions of phasespace with small invariant mass of the bottom anti-bottom quark pair. Ourresults will be relevant to ongoing and future searches at hadron colliders, asthe W/Z b anti-b production mode is the main background to important signals,such as light Standard Model Higgs boson production or single top-quarkproduction.