Same-sign W pair production as a probe of double parton scattering at the LHC

Abstract

We study the production of same-sign W boson pairs at the LHC in double parton interactions. Compared with simple factorised double parton distributions (dPDFs), we show that the recently developed dPDFs, GS09, lead to non-trivial kinematic correlations between the W bosons. A numerical study of the prospects for observing this process using same-sign dilepton signatures, including same-sign WWjj, di-boson and heavy flavour backgrounds, at 14 TeV centre-of-mass energy is then performed. It is shown that a small excess of same-sign dilepton events from double parton scattering over a background dominated by single scattering WZ(gamma*) production could be observed at the LHC.

14 pages, 8 figures. Added references, slight changes in the texts