NLO QCD Predictions for $Wb\bar b$ Production in Association with up to Three Light Jets at the LHC

Abstract

In this article we present the next-to-leading order QCD predictions for $Wb\bar{b}+n$-jet ($n=0,1,2,3$) production at the Large Hadron Collider with $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV. We work in the four-flavor number scheme with a non-vanishing bottom-quark mass and include all subprocesses at leading electroweak order as well as all heavy-fermion-loop effects. We show the impact of QCD corrections for total as well as differential cross sections and make an assessment of theoretical uncertainties of $Wb\bar{b}$ production viewed as an irreducible background to $H(\rightarrow b{\bar b})W$ studies. For the calculations we have employed an upgraded version of the BlackHat library which can handle massive fermions in combination with SHERPA. Our results can be explored through publicly available $n$-tuple sets.