ZA production in vector-boson scattering at next-to-leading order QCD

Cross sections and differential distributions for ZA production in association with two jets via vector boson fusion are presented at next-to-leading order in QCD. The leptonic decays of the Z boson with full off-shell effects and spin correlations are taken into account. The uncertainties due to different scale choices and pdf sets are studied. Furthermore, we analyze the effect of including anomalous quartic gauge couplings at NLO QCD.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figure

NLO QCD corrections to WZjj production at the LHC

We present a summary of the first calculation of NLO QCD corrections to WZjj production with leptonic decays at the LHC. Our results show that the next-to-leading order corrections reduce significantly the scale uncertainties.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, Proceedings of the inaugural conference Windows on the Universe, August 2013, Quy Nhon, Vietna

WZ production in association with two jets at NLO in QCD

We report on the calculation of $W^\pm Zjj$ production with leptonic decays at hadron-hadron colliders at next-to-leading order in QCD. These processes are important both to test the quartic gauge couplings of the Standard Model and because they constitute relevant backgrounds to beyond standard model physics searches. Our results show that the next-to-leading order corrections reduce significantly the scale uncertainties and have a non-trivial phase space dependence.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Next-to-leading order QCD corrections to W+W+W^+W^+ and W−W−W^-W^- production in association with two jets

We present a study of $W^+W^+jj$ and $W^-W^-jj$ production including leptonic decays in hadron-hadron collisions. The full electroweak and QCD induced contributions and their interferences are calculated at leading order. We find that, for inclusive cuts, the interference effects can be large if the jets are produced with large transverse momentum where, however, the production rate is suppressed. We also discuss the vector-boson-fusion (VBF) cuts and show the validity of the VBF approximation. The NLO QCD corrections to the QCD-induced channels are also calculated. Compared to the previous calculation, we allow the intermediate $W$ bosons to be off-shell. For on-shell $W$ production, we obtain an excellent agreement with previous results. Our code will be publicly available as part of the parton level Monte Carlo program VBFNLO.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figures, 4 tables, v2: added results using a 2nd scale choice, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Next-to-Leading Order QCD Corrections to Vector Boson Pair Production in Association with two Jets at the LHC

Pair production of electroweak (EW) vector bosons in association with two jets constitutes an important set of processes at the LHC. Besides their contribution as a background to various searches for physics beyond the Standard Model, these processes allow one to probe the mechanism of EW symmetry breaking. In this thesis, the QCD-induced contributions to these processes are studied at next-to-leading order QCD

Finite baryon and isospin chemical potential in AdS/CFT with flavor

We investigate the thermodynamics of a thermal field theory in presence of both a baryon and an isospin chemical potential. For this we consider a probe of several D7-branes embedded in the AdS-Schwarzschild black hole background. We determine the structure of the phase diagram and calculate the relevant thermodynamical quantities both in the canonical and in the grand canonical ensemble. We discuss how accidental symmetries present reflect themselves in the phase diagram: In the case of two flavors, for small densities, there is a rotational symmetry in the plane spanned by the baryon and isospin density which breaks down at large densities, leaving a Z_4-symmetry. Finally, we calculate vector mode spectral functions and determine their dependence on either the baryon or the isospin density. For large densities, a new excitation forms with energy below the known supersymmetric spectrum. Increasing the density further, this excitation becomes unstable. We speculate that this instability indicates a new phase of condensed mesons.Comment: 62 pages, 32 figures. references and paragraph about non-Abelian DBI action adde

A non-linear EFT description of gg → H H at NLO interfaced to POWHEG

We present the implementation of Higgs boson pair production in gluon fusion within a non-linear Effective Field Theory framework containing five anomalous couplings for this process. The code, available within the POWHEG-BOX-V2, includes full NLO QCD corrections with massive top quarks. All five couplings can be modified by the user. We show m$_{hh}$ distributions at seven benchmark points provided by an m$_{hh}$ shape analysis at NLO and showered phh¦T distributions resulting from an interface to PYTHIA-8 and HERWIG-7.2