Eur. Phys. J. C 16, 311-330
DOI 10.1007/s100520000410
A full next-to-leading order study
of direct photon pair production in hadronic collisions
T. Binoth - J.Ph. Guillet - E. Pilon - M. Werlen
Laboratoire d'Annecy-le-Vieux de Physique Théorique LAPTH,
B.P. 110, 74941 Annecy-le-Vieux Cedex, France
Received: 24 November 1999 / Revised version: 13 March 2000 /
Published online: 8 June 2000 - © Springer-Verlag 2000
Abstract
We discuss the production of photon pairs in hadronic collisions,
from
fixed target to LHC energies. The study which follows is based
on a
QCD calculation at full next-to-leading order accuracy, including
single
and double fragmentation contributions, and implemented in the
form of a
general purpose computer program of ``partonic event generator''
type.
To illustrate the possibilities of this code, we present a
comparison
with observables measured by the WA70 and D0 collaborations,
and some predictions for the irreducible background to the search
of
Higgs bosons at LHC in the channel
.
We also
discuss theoretical scale uncertainties for these predictions,
and examine
several infrared sensitive situations which deserve further
study.
Copyright Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag 2000
