Off-shell production of top-antitop pairs in the lepton+jets channel at NLO QCD

Abstract The production of top-quark pairs that subsequently decay hadronically and leptonically (lepton+jets channel) is one of the key processes for the study of top-quark properties at the LHC. In this article, NLO QCD corrections of order Oαs3α4 $$ \mathcal{O}\left({\alpha}_{\mathrm{s}}^3{\alpha}^4\right) $$ to the hadronic process pp→μ−ν¯μbb¯jj $$ \mathrm{pp}\to {\mu}^{-}{\overline{\nu}}_{\mu}\mathrm{b}\overline{\mathrm{b}}\mathrm{j}\mathrm{j} $$ are presented. The computation includes off-shell as well as non-resonant contributions, and experimental event selections are used in order to provide realistic predictions. The results are provided in the form of cross sections and differential distributions. The QCD corrections are sizeable and different from the ones of the fully leptonic channel. This is due to the different final state where here four jets are present at leading order