The decays of on-shell and off-shell polarized gauge bosons into massive quark pairs at NLO QCD

Abstract

We discuss the polar angle decay distribution in the decay of on-shell and off-shell polarized (W,Z) gauge bosons into massive quark pairs. In particular for the off-shell decays in $H \to (W,Z) + (W^\ast,Z^\ast) (\to q_1\bar q_2)$ it is important to keep the masses of the charm and bottom quarks at their finite values since the scale of the problem is not set by $m_{W,Z}^2$ but by the off-shellness of the gauge boson which varies in the range $(m_1+m_2)^2 \le q^2 \le (m_H-m_{W,Z})^2$.