Electroweak radiative corrections to W-boson production at hadron colliders

Abstract

The complete set of electroweak O(alpha) corrections to the Drell--Yan-like production of W bosons is calculated and compared to an approximation provided by the leading term of an expansion about the W-resonance pole. All relevant formulae are listed explicitly, and particular attention is paid to issues of gauge invariance and the instability of the W bosons. A detailed discussion of numerical results underlines the phenomenological importance of the electroweak corrections to W-boson production at the Tevatron and at the LHC. While the pole expansion yields a good description of resonance observables, it is not sufficient for the high-energy tail of transverse-momentum distributions, relevant for new-physics searches.

Comments: 29 pages, latex, 17 postscript files, revised version that is to appear in Phys.Rev.D, some explanations added and results extended by a discussion of the QED factorization scale dependence