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

• Other Authors: Febres Cordero, Fernando (authoraut)
• Format: Others
• Language: English; English
• Published: Florida State University
• Subjects: Physics
• Online Access: http://purl.flvc.org/fsu/fd/FSU_migr_etd-4486

We present the calculation of Next-to-Leading-Order Quantum Chromo Dynamics corrections for the production of W or Z weak bosons associated with a bottom anti-bottom quark pair at hadron colliders (ppbar, pp to W/Z bbbar), including the effects of a non-zero bottom-quark mass. We find a considerable reduction of the renormalization and factorization scale dependence of our results with respect to Leading-Order calculations. In particular, we study the impact of the corrections on the total cross section and invariant mass distributions of the bottom anti-bottom quark pair at the Fermilab Tevatron ppbar collider. We perform a detailed comparison with a calculation that considers massless bottom quarks and find significant deviations in regions of phase space with small invariant mass of the bottom anti-bottom quark pair. Our results will be relevant to ongoing and future searches at hadron colliders, as the W/Z bbbar production mode is the main background to important signals, such as light Standard Model Higgs boson production or single top-quark production. === A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Physics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. === Fall Semester, 2007. === September 26, 2007. === W/Z Plus Bottom Quarks, NLO QCD, Single-top, Higgs === Includes bibliographical references. === Laura Reina, Professor Directing Dissertation; Paolo Aluffi, Outside Committee Member; Howard Baer, Committee Member; Harrison Prosper, Committee Member; Jorge Piekarewicz, Committee Member.