EVAluation of the Equivalent Vector boson Approximation at highest energy colliders

A bstract Collider processes at the highest available partonic center-of-mass energies — 10 TeV and above — exhibit a new regime of electroweak interactions where electroweak gauge bosons mostly act as quasi-massless partons in vector boson fusion processes. We scrutinize these processes using the Equivalent Vector boson Approximation (EVA) based on its implementation in the Monte Carlo generator framework W hizard . Using a variety of important physics processes, including top pairs, Higgs pairs, neutrino pairs, and vector boson pairs, we study the behavior of processes initiated by transverse and longitudinal vector bosons, both W and Z induced. By considering several distributions for each process, we conclude that: there is no universal, process-independent prescription which minimizes the discrepancies between EVA- and matrix-element-based predictions; even by resorting to process-by-process prescriptions, we typically observe significant observable-dependent effects; the uncertainties associated with parameter dependencies in the EVA can be as large as $$\mathcal{O}(100\%)$$ , and can only possibly be reduced by careful process-dependent kinematical selections.