Vector boson pair production at the LHC

Abstract

We present phenomenological results for vector boson pair production at the LHC, obtained using the parton-level next-to-leading order program MCFM. We include the implementation of a new process in the code, pp → γγ, and important updates to existing processes. We incorporate fragmentation contributions in order to allow for the experimental isolation of photons in γγ, Wγ, and Zγ production and also account for gluon-gluon initial state contributions for all relevant processes. We present results for a variety of phenomenological scenarios, at the current operating energy of $ \sqrt {s} = 7 $ TeV and for the ultimate machine goal, $ \sqrt {s} = 14 $ TeV. We investigate the impact of our predictions on several important distributions that enter into searches for new physics at the LHC.