Electroweak Radiative Corrections to W Boson Production in Hadronic Collisions

Abstract

The O(\alpha) electroweak radiative corrections to the process pp, ppbar\to W \to\ell^\pm\nu (\ell=e,\mu) are calculated. The O(\alpha) corrections can be decomposed into separately gauge invariant contributions to the W boson production and decay processes. Factorizing the collinear singularity associated with initial state photon radiation into the parton distribution functions, we find that initial state corrections have a significantly smaller effect than final state radiative corrections. We study in detail the effect of electroweak radiative corrections on a number of interesting observables: the W transverse mass distribution, the W to Z transverse mass ratio, the charge asymmetry of leptons in W\to\ell\nu decays, as well as the W production cross section and the W to Z cross section ratio. We also investigate how experimental lepton identification requirements change the effect of the electroweak corrections.