tt¯bb¯ at NLO precision in a variable flavor number scheme

A bstract Top-quark pair production in association with two b -jets is computed at next-to-leading order QCD precision, including effects of the b -quark mass, and matched to a t t ¯ +jets simulation in a variable flavor number scheme. The Monte Carlo realization of this method, called fusing, consistently embeds the four-flavor calculation in a particle-level event generator. As a first phenomenological application, we present observables relevant to the data-driven estimation of irreducible backgrounds to t t ¯ H -production.