Mixed QCD-EW corrections to W-pair production at electron-positron colliders

Abstract

The discrepancy between the CDF measurement and the Standard Model theoretical prediction for the W-boson mass underscores the importance of conducting high-precision studies on the W boson, which is one of the predominant objectives of proposed future e⁺e⁻ colliders. We investigate in detail the production of W-boson pairs at e⁺e⁻ colliders, and compute the next-to-next-to-leading order mixed QCD-EW corrections to both the integrated cross section and various kinematic distributions. By employing the method of differential equations, we analytically calculate the two-loop master integrals for the mixed QCD-EW virtual corrections to e⁺e⁻ → W⁺W⁻. Utilizing the Magnus transformation, we derive a set of canonical master integrals for each integral family. This canonical basis satisfies a system of differential equations in which the dependence on the dimensional regulator is linearly factorized from the kinematics. We then express all these canonical master integrals as Taylor series in ϵ up to ϵ⁴, with coefficients articulated in terms of Goncharov polylogarithms up to weight four. Upon applying our analytic expressions of these master integrals to the phenomenological analysis of W-pair production, we observe that the \( \mathcal{O} \)(αα_s) corrections are significantly impactful in the α(0) scheme, particularly in certain phase-space regions. However, these mixed QCD-EW corrections can be heavily suppressed by adopting the G_μ scheme.