Triple Electroweak Gauge-Boson Production at Fermilab Tevatron Energies

Abstract

We calculate the three gauge-boson production in the Standard Model at Fermilab Tevatron energies. At $\sqrt s=2$ TeV in $p\bar p$ collisions, the cross sections for the triple gauge-boson production are typically of order 10 femtobarns (fb). For the pure leptonic final states from the gauge-boson decays and with some minimal cuts on final state photons, the cross sections for $p \bar p \rightarrow W^\pm \gamma\gamma, Z\gamma\gamma$ and $W^+W^- \gamma$ processes are of order a few fb, resulting in a few dozen clean leptonic events for an integrated luminosity of 10 fb$^{-1}$. The pure leptonic modes from other gauge-boson channels give significantly smaller rate. Especially, the trilepton modes from $W^+W^-W^\pm$ and $t \bar t W^\pm \rightarrow W^+W^-W^\pm$ yield a cross section of order 0.1 fb if there is no significant Higgs boson contribution. For a Higgs boson with $m_H^{} \simeq 2M_Z^{}$, the triple massive-gauge-boson production rate could be enhanced by a factor of $4-6$.