Next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the production of two bottom-antibottom pairs at the LHC.

We report the results of a computation of the full next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the production of two bb pairs at the LHC. This calculation at the parton level provides predictions for well separated b jets. The results show that the next-to-leading order corrections lead to an enhancement of the cross section for the central scale choice by roughly 50% with respect to the leading order result. The theoretical uncertainty estimated by variation of the renormalization and factorization scales is strongly reduced by the inclusion of next-to-leading order corrections.