# Lepton-pair production in association with a $$b\overline{b}$$ pair and the determination of the W boson mass

Journal of High Energy Physics, Jul 2018

Abstract We perform a study of lepton-pair production in association with bottom quarks at the LHC based on the predictions obtained at next-to-leading order in QCD, both at fixed order and matched with a QCD parton shower. We consider a comprehensive set of observables and estimate the associated theoretical uncertainties by studying the dependence on the perturbative QCD scales (renormalisation, factorisation and shower) and by comparing different parton-shower models (Pythia8 and Herwig++) and matching schemes (MC@NLO and POWHEG). Based on these results, we propose a simple procedure to include bottom-quark effects in neutral-current Drell-Yan production, going beyond the standard massless approximation. Focusing on the inclusive lepton-pair transverse-momentum distribution $${p}_{\perp}^{\ell^{+}\ell -}$$, we quantify the impact of such effects on the tuning of the simulation of charged-current Drell-Yan observables and the W-boson mass determination.

This is a preview of a remote PDF: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2FJHEP07%282018%29101.pdf

Emanuele Bagnaschi, Fabio Maltoni, Alessandro Vicini, Marco Zaro. Lepton-pair production in association with a $$b\overline{b}$$ pair and the determination of the W boson mass, Journal of High Energy Physics, 2018, 101, DOI: 10.1007/JHEP07(2018)101