NLO mass effects in b anti-b b anti-b production at the LHC

Abstract

The calculation of NLO QCD corrections to the production cross section of two bottom pairs at the LHC is briefly summarized. We describe the pp -> b anti-b b anti-b+X process both in the 4-flavor and 5-flavor scheme and investigate the effect of the finite bottom quark mass. The results for the total cross section and a few differential distributions are presented. They have been obtained with the Nagy-Soper subtraction formalism for real radiation at NLO. A comparison with results based on the traditional Catani-Seymour subtraction is also included.