Electroweak radiative corrections to neutral-current Drell-Yan processes at hadron colliders

Abstract

We calculate the complete electroweak ο(α) corrections to p p(-)→l+l-X (l=e,μ) in the standard model (SM) of electroweak interactions. They comprise weak and photonic virtual one-loop corrections as well as real photon radiation to the parton-level processes qq̄→y, Z→l+ l-. We study in detail the effect of the radiative corrections on the l+l- invariant mass distribution, the cross section in the Z boson resonance region, and on the forward-backward asymmetry AFB at the Fermilab Tevatron and the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The weak corrections are found to increase the Z boson cross section by about 1%, but have little effect on the forward-backward asymmetry in the Z peak region. Threshold effects of the W box diagrams lead to pronounced effects in AFB at m(l+l -)≈160 GeV which, however, will be difficult to observe experimentally. At high dilepton invariant masses, the nonfactorizable weak corrections are found to become large. © 2002 The American Physical Society.