Off-shell single-top production at NLO matched to parton showers

We study the hadroproduction of a W b pair in association with a light jet, focusing on the dominant t-channel contribution and including exactly at the matrix-element level all non-resonant and off-shell effects induced by the finite top-quark width. Our simulations are accurate to the next-to-leading order in QCD, and are matched to the Herwig6 and Pythia8 parton showers through the MC@NLO method. We present phenomenological results relevant to the 8 TeV LHC, and carry out a thorough comparison to the case of on-shell t-channel single-top production. We formulate our approach so that it can be applied to the general case of matrix elements that feature coloured intermediate resonances and are matched to parton showers.