Precise predictions for jets dark matter backgrounds.

High-energy jets recoiling against missing transverse energy (MET) are powerful probes of dark matter at the LHC. Searches based on large MET signatures require a precise control of the  jet background in the signal region. This can be achieved by taking accurate data in control regions dominated by  jet,  jet and  jet production, and extrapolating to the  jet background by means of precise theoretical predictions.

W+ W- production at hadron colliders in next to next to leading order QCD.

Charged gauge boson pair production at the Large Hadron Collider allows detailed probes of the fundamental structure of electroweak interactions. We present precise theoretical predictions for on-shell W+ W- production that include, for the first time, QCD effects up to next to next to leading order in perturbation theory. As compared to next to leading order, the inclusive W+ W- cross section is enhanced by 9% at 7 TeV and 12% at 14 TeV.

Scattering amplitudes with open loops.

We introduce a new technique to generate scattering amplitudes at one loop. Traditional tree algorithms, which handle diagrams with fixed momenta, are promoted to generators of loop-momentum polynomials that we call open loops. Combining open loops with tensor-integral and Ossola-Papadopoulos-Pittau reduction results in a fully flexible, very fast, and numerically stable one-loop generator.

Next-to-leading-order QCD corrections to W+W-bb production at hadron colliders.

Top-antitop quark pairs belong to the most abundantly produced and precisely measurable heavy-particle signatures at hadron colliders and allow for crucial tests of the standard model and new physics searches. Here we report on the calculation of the next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD corrections to hadronic W(+)W(-)bb production, which provides a complete NLO description of the production of top-antitop pairs and their subsequent decay into W bosons and bottom quarks, including interferences, off-shell effects, and nonresonant backgrounds. Numerical predictions for the Tevatron and the LHC are presented.

Next-to-leading order QCD corrections to pp-->ttbb+X at the LHC.

We report on the calculation of the full next-to-leading-order QCD corrections to the production of ttbb final states at the LHC, which deliver a serious background contribution to the production of a Higgs boson (decaying into a bb pair) in association with a tt pair. While the corrections significantly reduce the unphysical scale dependence of the leading-order cross section, our results predict an enhancement of the ttbb production cross section by a K factor of about 1.8.