Role of the QCD-induced gluon-gluon coupling to gauge-boson pairs in the multi-TeV region

Abstract

We discuss the production of \ensuremath{\gamma}\ensuremath{\gamma} and ${Z}^{0}$\ensuremath{\gamma} pairs induced by the gluon-gluon fusion mechanism at typical supercollider energies. Due to the large flux of gluons with small fractional momenta, it is found that in certain kinematical configurations this subprocess, although of order (${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{s}$/\ensuremath{\pi}${)}^{2}$ with respect to the leading quark annihilation, can give an appreciable contribution to the cross section for ${Z}^{0}$\ensuremath{\gamma} production and even a larger one for the \ensuremath{\gamma}\ensuremath{\gamma} production.