https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-025-15069-x
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Precise standard-model predictions for polarised Z-boson pair production and decay at the LHC
1
Department of Physics and Geology and INFN, University of Perugia, 06123, Perugia, Italy
2
Department of Physics and INFN, University of Torino, 10125, Turin, Italy
3
Institut für Theoretische Physik und Astrophysik, Universität Würzburg, 97074, Würzburg, Germany
4
Department of Modern Physics and State Key Laboratory of Particle Detection and Electronics, University of Science and Technology of China, 230026, Hefei, China
5
Institute for Nuclear and Particle Physics, Dresden University of Technology, 01062, Dresden, Germany
6
Department of Physics, University of Massachusetts, 01003-4525, Amherst, MA, USA
7
Phenikaa Institute for Advanced Study, Phenikaa University, 12116, Hanoi, Vietnam
8
Physik-Department, Max-Planck-Institut für Physik and Technische Universität München, 85748, Garching, Germany
9
Centre for Cosmology, Particle Physics and Phenomenology, Université Catholique de Louvain, 1348, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
10
Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin, 53706-1390, Madison, WI, USA
11
Department of Physics and INFN, University of Milano-Bicocca, 20126, Milan, Italy
12
Institute of Nuclear Physics, 31-342, Krakow, Poland
13
Department of Physics, University of Warwick, CV4-7AL, Coventry, UK
14
Department of Physics, Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology, Durham University, DH1-3LE, Durham, UK
15
Institute of Modern Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 730000, Lanzhou, Gansu Province, China
16
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100049, Beijing, China
a
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Received:
28
May
2025
Accepted:
12
November
2025
Published online:
21
November
2025
Abstract
Providing accurate theoretical predictions in the Standard Model for processes with polarised electroweak bosons is crucial to understand more in-depth the electroweak-symmetry breaking mechanism and to enhance the sensitivity to potential new-physics effects. Motivated by the rapidly increasing number of polarisation analyses of di-boson processes with LHC data, we carry out a comprehensive study of the inclusive production of two polarised Z bosons in the decay channel with four charged leptons. We perform a detailed comparison of fixed-order predictions obtained with various Monte Carlo programs which rely on different signal-definition strategies, assessing non-resonant and interference effects by contrasting polarised results with unpolarised and full off-shell ones. For the first time, we accomplish the combination of NNLO QCD and NLO EW corrections, setting the new state-of-the-art perturbative accuracy for polarised Z-boson pairs at the LHC. The impact of parton-shower matching and multi-jet merging is investigated by scrutinising calculations obtained with event generators that are typically used in experimental analyses. Integrated and differential results are discussed in a realistic fiducial setup and compared to publicly available ATLAS results.
This work was supported by the relevant grants and institutes.
Giovanni Pelliccioli and Rene Poncelet are coordinators.
© The Author(s) 2025
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Funded by SCOAP3.
