Electroweak radiative corrections toWboson production in hadronic collisions

The O(α) electroweak radiative corrections to the process $p\stackrel{\left(-\right)}{p}\to W^{\pm }\to {\mathcal{l}}^{\pm }\nu$ $(\mathcal{l}=e,\mu )$ are calculated. The O(α) corrections can be decomposed into separate gauge invariant contributions to the $W$ boson production and decay processes. Factorizing the collinear singularity associated with initial state photon radiation into the parton distribution functions, we find that initial state corrections have a significantly smaller effect than final state radiative corrections. We study in detail the effect of electroweak radiative corrections on a number of interesting observables: the $W$ transverse mass distribution, the $W$ to $Z$ transverse mass ratio, the charge asymmetry of leptons in $\overrightarrow{W}\mathcal{l}\nu$ decays, as well as the $W$ production cross section and the $W$ to $Z$ cross section ratio. We also investigate how experimental lepton identification requirements change the effect of the electroweak corrections.