Mixed NNLO QCD × electroweak corrections to single-Z production in pole approximation: differential distributions and forward-backward asymmetry

Abstract

Abstract Radiative corrections in pole approximation, which are based on the leading contribution in a systematic expansion of amplitudes about resonance poles, naturally decompose into factorizable corrections attributed to the production or decay of the resonance and non-factorizable corrections induced by soft photon (or gluon) exchange between those subprocesses. In this paper we complete an earlier calculation of mixed QCD × electroweak corrections of $$\mathcal{O}\left({\alpha }_{{\text{s}}}\alpha \right)$$ to the neutral-current Drell-Yan cross section in pole approximation by including the previously neglected corrections that are solely related to the Z-boson production process. We present numerical results both for differential distributions and for the forward-backward asymmetry differential in the lepton-pair invariant mass, which is the key observable in the measurement of the effective weak mixing angle at the LHC. Carefully disentangling the various types of factorizable and non-factorizable corrections, we find (as expected in our earlier work) that the by far most important contribution at $$\mathcal{O}\left({\alpha }_{{\text{s}}}\alpha \right)$$ originates from the interplay of initial-state QCD corrections and electroweak final-state corrections.

Keywords

• Electroweak Precision Physics
• Higher Order Electroweak Calculations
• Higher-Order Perturbative Calculations