We compute the O(α s α 2 ) and O(α 2 s α) contributions to the production cross section of a Z boson with one b jet at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and study their phenomenological relevance for LHC physics. The accurate prediction of hadronic Z + b-jet production is needed to control a background that greatly affects both the measurement of Higgs-boson properties and searches of new physics at the LHC. At the same time it could enable the first precise measurement of the b-quark parton distribution function. In this context b-quark mass effects become relevant and need to be studied with care, both at the level of the hard process and at the level of the initial-and final-state parton evolution. It is the aim of this paper to explore some of these issues in the framework of a massive 5 Flavor Scheme and to assess the need for both the inclusion of electroweak corrections, in addition to QCD corrections, and b-quark mass effects in the prediction of total and differential cross sections for hadronic Z + b-jet production.

After a brief introduction to the state of the art of theoretical predictions for electroweak vectorboson production with both top and bottom quarks at the LHC, we review the case of Z-boson production with b jets, and discuss the impact of NLO QCD+EW corrections and finite b-mass effects on the theoretical prediction for Z + b jet production.