Complete Initial State QED Corrections to Off-Shell Gauge Boson Pair Production in e+e- Annihilation

Abstract

We study Standard Model four-fermion production in e+ e- annihilation at LEP2 energies and above using a semi-analytical approach. We derive the complete QED initial state corrections (ISR) to the reactions e+e- -> ZZ -> $f_1\overline{f_1}{f}_2\overline{f_2}$ and e+e- -> W+W- -> ${\bar{f}}_1^u{f}_1^d{f}_2^u{\bar{f}}_2^d$ with $f_1\ne f_2$~and $f_i\ne e^{\pm },{\nu }_e$. As compared to the well-known universal s-channel ISR, additional complexity arises due to non-universal, process-dependent ISR contributions from t- and u-channel fermion exchanges. The full set of formulae needed to perform numerical calculations is given together with samples of numerical results.

Comments: 65 pages, 4 postscript figures, uses elsart.sty, amsfonts.sty, and epsfig.sty, full postscript available from http://www.ifh.de/~lehner/desy96-028.ps.gz