Automation of electroweak corrections for LHC processes

For the Run 2 of the LHC next-to-leading order electroweak corrections will play an important role. Even though they are typically moderate at the level of total cross sections they can lead to substantial deviations in the shapes of distributions. In particular for new physics searches but also for a precise determination of Standard Model observables their inclusion in the theoretical predictions is mandatory for a reliable estimation of the Standard Model contribution. In this article we review the status and recent developments in electroweak calculations and their automation for LHC processes. We discuss general issues and properties of NLO electroweak corrections and present some examples, including the full calculation of the NLO corrections to the production of a W boson in association with two jets computed using GoSaM interfaced to MadDipole.Comment: LaTex, 60 pages, 8 Figure

Integrated dipoles with MadDipole in the MadGraph framework

Heading towards a full automation of next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD corrections, one important ingredient is the analytical integration over the one-particle phase space of the unresolved particle that is necessary when adding the subtraction terms to the virtual corrections. We present the implementation of these integrated dipoles in the MadGraph framework. The result is a package that allows an automated calculation for the NLO real emission parts of an arbitrary process.Comment: 22 pages, 1 figure. Published version: few reference updates and a couple of minor corrections to the tex

A Forward Branching Phase-Space Generator

We develop a forward branching phase-space generator for use in next-to-leading order parton level event generators. By performing 2 -> 3 branchings from a fixed jet phase-space point, all bremsstrahlung events contributing to the given jet configuration are generated. The resulting phase-space integration is three-dimensional irrespective of the considered jet multiplicity. In this first study, we use the forward branching phase-space generator to calculate in the leading-color approximation next-to-leading order corrections to fully differential gluonic jet configurations.Comment: 35 pages, 5 figures, 1 tabl

The SM and NLO multileg working group: Summary report

This report summarizes the activities of the SM and NLO Multileg Working Group of the Workshop "Physics at TeV Colliders", Les Houches, France 8-26 June, 2009.Comment: 169 pages, Report of the SM and NLO Multileg Working Group for the Workshop "Physics at TeV Colliders", Les Houches, France 8-26 June, 200

Scattering AMplitudes from Unitarity-based Reduction Algorithm at the Integrand-level

SAMURAI is a tool for the automated numerical evaluation of one-loop corrections to any scattering amplitudes within the dimensional-regularization scheme. It is based on the decomposition of the integrand according to the OPP-approach, extended to accommodate an implementation of the generalized d-dimensional unitarity-cuts technique, and uses a polynomial interpolation exploiting the Discrete Fourier Transform. SAMURAI can process integrands written either as numerator of Feynman diagrams or as product of tree-level amplitudes. We discuss some applications, among which the 6- and 8-photon scattering in QED, and the 6-quark scattering in QCD. SAMURAI has been implemented as a Fortran90 library, publicly available, and it could be a useful module for the systematic evaluation of the virtual corrections oriented towards automating next-to-leading order calculations relevant for the LHC phenomenology.Comment: 35 pages, 7 figure

Virtual QCD corrections to Higgs boson plus four parton processes

We report on the calculation of virtual processes contributing to the production of a Higgs boson and two jets in hadron-hadron collisions. The coupling of the Higgs boson to gluons, via a virtual loop of top quarks, is treated using an effective theory, valid in the large top quark mass limit. The calculation is performed by evaluating one-loop diagrams in the effective theory. The primary method of calculation is a numerical evaluation of the virtual amplitudes as a Laurent series in $D-4$, where $D$ is the dimensionality of space-time. For the cases $H \to q\bar{q}q\bar{q}$ and $H \to q\bar{q}q'\bar{q}'$ we confirm the numerical results by an explicit analytic calculation.Comment: 21 pages, 2 figures. v2 modifies the text to agree with published version and corrects typos in the analytical expressions for the four quark amplitude

NLO QCD corrections to off-shell top-antitop production with leptonic decays at hadron colliders

We present details of a calculation of the cross section for hadronic top-antitop production in next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD, including the decays of the top and antitop into bottom quarks and leptons. This calculation is based on matrix elements for \nu e e+ \mu- \bar{\nu}_{\mu}b\bar{b} production and includes all non-resonant diagrams, interferences, and off-shell effects of the top quarks. Such contributions are formally suppressed by the top-quark width and turn out to be small in the inclusive cross section. However, they can be strongly enhanced in exclusive observables that play an important role in Higgs and new-physics searches. Also non-resonant and off-shell effects due to the finite W-boson width are investigated in detail, but their impact is much smaller than naively expected. We also introduce a matching approach to improve NLO calculations involving intermediate unstable particles. Using a fixed QCD scale leads to perturbative instabilities in the high-energy tails of distributions, but an appropriate dynamical scale stabilises NLO predictions. Numerical results for the total cross section, several distributions, and asymmetries are presented for Tevatron and the LHC at 7 TeV, 8 TeV, and 14 TeV.Comment: 61 pp. Matches version published in JHEP; one more reference adde

GoSam-2.0: a tool for automated one-loop calculations within the Standard Model and beyond

We present the version 2.0 of the program package GoSam for the automated calculation of one-loop amplitudes. GoSam is devised to compute one-loop QCD and/or electroweak corrections to multi-particle processes within and beyond the Standard Model. The new code contains improvements in the generation and in the reduction of the amplitudes, performs better in computing time and numerical accuracy, and has an extended range of applicability. The extended version of the "Binoth-Les-Houches-Accord" interface to Monte Carlo programs is also implemented. We give a detailed description of installation and usage of the code, and illustrate the new features in dedicated examples.Comment: replaced by published version and reference adde