NLO QCD corrections to top anti-top bottom anti-bottom production at the LHC: 1. quark-antiquark annihilation

Understand

The process pp -> top anti-top bottom anti-bottom + X represents a very important background reaction to searches at the LHC, in particular to top anti-top H production where the Higgs boson decays into a bottom anti-bottom pair.

• A successful analysis of top anti-top H at the LHC requires the knowledge of direct top anti-top bottom anti-bottom production at next-to-leading order in QCD.
• We take the first step in this direction upon calculating the next-to-leading-order QCD corrections to the subprocess initiated by quark anti-quark annihilation.
• We devote an appendix to the general issue of rational terms resulting from ultraviolet or infrared (soft or collinear) singularities within dimensional regularization.