Abstract: The inclusive production of hadrons through electroweak currents can be rigorously analysed with short-distance theoretical tools. The associated observables are insensitive to the involved infrared behaviour of the strong interaction, allowing for very precise tests of Quantum Chromodynamics. The theoretical predictions for sigma(e(+)e(-) -> hadrons) and the hadronic decay widths of the tau lepton and the Z, W and Higgs bosons have reached an impressive accuracy of O(alpha(4)(s)). Precise experimental measurements of the Z and tau hadronic widths have made possible the accurate determination of the strong coupling at two very different energy scales, providing a highly significant experimental verification of asymptotic freedom. A detailed discussion of the theoretical description of these processes and their current phenomenological status is presented. The most precise determinations of alpha(s) from other sources are also briefly reviewed and compared with the fully-inclusive results.

Abstract: In this article, we consider the transverse momentum (qT) distribution of W and Z bosons produced in hadronic collisions. We combine the qT resummation for QED and QCD radiation including the QED soft emissions from the W boson in the final state. In particular, we perform the resummation of enhanced logarithmic contributions due to soft and collinear emissions at next-to-leading accuracy in QED, leading-order accuracy for mixed QED-QCD and next-to-next-to-leading accuracy in QCD. In the small-qT region we consistently include in our results the next-to-next-to-leading order (i.e. two loops) QCD corrections and the next-to-leading order (i.e. one loop) electroweak corrections. The matching with the fixed-order calculation at large qT has been performed at next-to-leading order in QCD (i.e. at O(alpha(2)(S))) and at leading order in QED. We show numerical results for W and Z production at the Tevatron and the LHC. Finally, we consider the effect of combined QCD and QED resummation for the ratio of W and Z qT distributions, and we study the impact of the QED corrections providing an estimate of the corresponding perturbative uncertainties.

Abstract: The Dresden-II reactor experiment has recently reported a suggestive evidence for the observation of coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering, using a germanium detector. Given the low recoil energy threshold, these data are particularly interesting for a low-energy determination of the weak mixing angle and for the study of new physics leading to spectral distortions at low momentum transfer. Using two hypotheses for the quenching factor, we study the impact of the data on: (i) The weak mixing angle at a renormalization scale of similar to 10 MeV, (ii) neutrino generalized interactions with light mediators, (iii) the sterile neutrino dipole portal. The results for the weak mixing angle show a strong dependence on the quenching factor choice. Although still with large uncertainties, the Dresden-II data provide for the first time a determination of sin(2)theta(W) at such scale using coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering data. Tight upper limits are placed on the light vector, scalar and tensor mediator scenarios. Kinematic constraints implied by the reactor anti-neutrino flux and the ionization energy threshold allow the sterile neutrino dipole portal to produce up-scattering events with sterile neutrino masses up to similar to 8 MeV. In this context, we find that limits are also sensitive to the quenching factor choice, but in both cases competitive with those derived from XENON1T data and more stringent that those derived with COHERENT data, in the same sterile neutrino mass range.