Compact two-loop QCD corrections for Vjj production in proton collisions

A bstract We present compact two-loop QCD corrections in the leading-color approximation for the production of an electroweak vector boson, V = { W ± , Z , γ ⋆ }, in association with two light jets ( Vjj ) at hadron colliders. Leptonic decays of the electroweak boson are included at the amplitude level. Working in the analytic-reconstruction approach, we develop two techniques to build compact partial-fraction forms for individual rational functions. One approach exploits their analytic structure. In the other, we iteratively construct subtraction terms that match the rational functions in singular limits. Moreover, we show how the singular behavior of the rational functions can be systematically used to find a more compact basis of the space that they span. We apply our techniques to the Vjj amplitudes, yielding a representation that is three orders of magnitude smaller than previous results. We then use these compact expressions to provide an efficient and stable C++ numerical implementation suitable for phenomenological applications.