# 1 Typical diagrams of W boson production at HERA: resolved, direct and DIS part.

WUE-ITP-98-058

hep-ph/9902296

February 1999

A Note on $`W`$ Boson Production at HERA<sup>*</sup><sup>*</sup>*Contribution to the 3rd UK Phenomenology Workshop on HERA Physics, Durham, 20-25 Sep. 1998.

P. Nason<sup>1</sup>, R. Rückl<sup>2</sup> and M. Spira<sup>3</sup>

<sup>1</sup>INFN, Sezione di Milano, Milan, Italy

<sup>2</sup> Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Würzburg, D-97074 Würzburg, Germany

<sup>3</sup>II. Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Hamburg, D-22761 Hamburg, Germany

## Abstract

We discuss $`W`$ boson production at HERA including NLO QCD corrections.

The production of $`W`$ bosons at $`ep`$ colliders is mediated by photon, $`Z`$ and $`W`$ exchange between the electron/positron and the hadronic part of the process . In practice, it is convenient to distinguish two regions, a small $`Q^2`$ one (photoproduction region), that can be treated using the Weizsäcker-Williams photon spectrum convoluted with the cross section for $`\gamma qq^{}W`$, and a large $`Q^2`$ one (DIS region).

While the treatment of the DIS region is straightforward \[a typical contribution is shown in the third diagram of Fig. 1\], the small $`Q^2`$ region requires the inclusion of the contribution of the hadronic component of the photon, in which the photon, behaving like a hadron, produces the $`W`$ in the collision with the proton via the standard Drell-Yan mechanism \[first diagram of Fig. 1\]. This component is, in fact, the dominant one for this process, and full NLO corrections should include both the NLO correction to the Drell-Yan process , and the leading hard photon contribution \[a typical contribution is shown in the second diagram of Fig. 1\], suitably subtracted for collinear singularities.

In the following, we separate the DIS from the small $`Q^2`$ region using an angular cut of 5<sup>o</sup> on the outgoing lepton, corresponding to a cut $`Q_{max}^2`$ in terms of the initial lepton energy .

For the resolved part we have evaluated the QCD corrections in the $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$ scheme. Defining the cross section at the values $`\mu _R=\mu _F=M_W`$ for the renormalization and factorization scales, the QCD corrections enhance the resolved contribution by about 40% for $`W^+`$ and $`W^{}`$ production. In order to demonstrate the theoretical uncertainties, the renormalization/factorization scale dependence of the individual contributions to the process $`e^+pW^++X\mu ^+\nu _\mu +X`$ \[including the branching ratio $`BR(W^+\mu ^+\nu _\mu )=10.84\%`$\] are presented in Fig. 2 for HERA conditions. It is clearly visible that the scale dependence in the sum of direct and resolved contributions is significantly reduced, once the NLO corrections to the resolved part are included. The full curve presents the total sum of NLO resolved, LO direct and the DIS LO contribution, i.e. the total $`W^+`$ production cross section after including the QCD corrections. The residual scale dependence is about 5%. Since the remaining dependence on $`Q_{max}^2`$ is of the same size, the total theoretical uncertainty is estimated to be less than about 10%.   

Acknowledgements.   
We would like to thank G. Altarelli, U. Baur and D. Zeppenfeld for helpful discussions.