Four-fermion production at $gammagamma$ colliders: 2. Radiative corrections in double-pole approximation

The electroweak radiative corrections to within the electroweak standard model are calculated in double-pole approximation (DPA). Virtual corrections are treated in DPA, leading to a classification into factorizable and non-factorizable contributions, and real-photonic corrections are based on complete lowest-order matrix elements for . Soft and collinear singularities appearing in the virtual and real corrections are combined alternatively in two different ways, namely by using the dipole subtraction method or by applying phase-space slicing. The radiative corrections are implemented in a Monte Carlo generator called Coffer - the computer code can be obtained from the authors upon request - which optionally includes anomalous triple and quartic gauge-boson couplings in addition and performs a convolution over realistic spectra of the photon beams. A detailed survey of numerical results comprises corrections to integrated cross sections as well as to angular, energy, and invariant-mass distributions. Particular attention is paid to the issue of collinear safety in the observables.Received: 3 June 2005, Published online: 5 August 2005