Off-shell W-pair production - universal versus non-universal corrections

Abstract

Electroweak radiative corrections to e+e- scattering processes typically amount to O(10%) at LEP energies. Their logarithmic increase with energy renders them even more important at future colliders. Although the bulk of these corrections is due to universal process-independent effects, the remaining non-universal corrections are nevertheless phenomenologically important. We describe the structure of the universal corrections to e+e- --> WW --> 4f in detail and discuss the numerical size of universal and non-universal effects using the Monte Carlo generator RACOONWW.