Electroweak O(alpha) Corrections to W+W- Pair Production in Polarized gamma-gamma Collisions

Abstract

Full O(alpha) electroweak corrections for gamma-gamma-> W+W- are calculated including virtual corrections, soft and hard real photon and Z-boson emission. The corrections are quite large ranging from -2.5% at 500 GeV to -18% at 2 TeV, |cos\theta^\pm| < cos(10^\circ). Contributions from real photon and Z-boson emission are important at high energies where they partly cancel large negative contribution originating from virtual bosonic corrections. Precision measurements that intend to uncover physics beyond the standard model must necessarily make use of the full standard model predictions including O(alpha) corrections.