Isolating Vector Boson Scattering at the LHC: gauge cancellations and the Equivalent Vector Boson Approximation vs complete calculations

We have studied the possibility of extracting the $W^+W^-\to W^+W^-$ signal using the process $us\to cd W^+W^-$ as a test case. We have investigated numerically the strong gauge cancellations between signal and irreducible background, analysing critically the reliability of the Equivalent Vector Boson Approximation which is commonly used to define the signal. Complete matrix elements are necessary to study Electro--Weak Symmetry Breaking effects at high $WW$ invariant mass.Comment: Final version published in PR

Boson Fusion and Higgs production at the LHC in six fermion final states with one charged lepton pair

Boson boson scattering and Higgs production in boson boson fusion will be actively investigated at the LHC. We have performed a parton level study of all processes of the type $q_1 q_2 \to q_3 q_4 q_5 q_6 l^+l^-$ using for the first time a full fledged six fermion Monte Carlo event generator which employs exact matrix elements at \O(\alpha_{em}^6). We have examined Higgs production in vector boson fusion followed by the decay chain $H\to ZZ\to l^+l^-jj$, including exactly all electroweak irreducible backgrounds. In the high mass region we have compared the case of a relatively light Higgs with the no-Higgs case. The integrated cross section for the latter case is more than twice that in the former for a minimum invariant mass of the $ZV$ pair of about 800 \GeV. We find, in a preliminary anlysis at parton level that, summing up the muon and the electron channels, about 30 events are expected in the light Higgs case for L=100 $fb^{-1}$.Comment: Final version published in Phys.Rev.

PHANTOM: a Monte Carlo event generator for six parton final states at high energy colliders

PHANTOM is a tree level Monte Carlo for six parton final states at proton--proton, proton--antiproton and electron--positron collider at O(alpha_ew^6) and O(alpha_ew^4*alpha_s^2) including possible interferences between the two sets of diagrams. This comprehends all purely electroweak contribution as well as all contributions with one virtual or two external gluons. It can generate unweighted events for any set of processes and it is interfaced to parton shower and hadronization packages via the last Les Houches Accord protocol. It can be used to analyze the physics of boson boson scattering, Higgs boson production in boson boson fusion, t-tbar and three boson production.Comment: Version updated to agree with published one in Comp.Phys.Com