A calculation of the loop-induced gluon-fusion process gg --> Z(photon)Z(photon) --> l anti-l l' anti-l' is presented, which provides an important background for Higgs boson searches in the H --> ZZ channel at the LHC. We find that the photon contribution is important for Higgs masses below the Z-pair threshold and that the gg-induced process yields a correction of about 15% relative to the NLO QCD prediction for the q anti-q-induced process when only a M(l anti-l), M(l' anti-l') > 5 GeV cut is applied.
@article{arxiv.0807.0024,
title = {Gluon-induced QCD corrections to pp --> ZZ --> l anti-l l' anti-l'},
author = {T. Binoth and N. Kauer and P. Mertsch},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0807.0024},
year = {2008}
}
Comments
4 pages, 1 figure, 1 table, to appear in the proceedings of the DIS 2008 workshop, 7-11 April 2008, University College London