PAIR PRODUCTION OF SCALAR LEPTOQUARKS AT THE FERMILAB TEVATRON

We present the cross section for pair production of scalar leptoquarks LQ in p (p) over bar collisions, p + (p) over bar --> LQ + (L) over b ar (Q) over bar + X, at the Fermilab Tevatron in next-to-leading order QCD. Including the higher-order corrections stabilizes the theoretica l prediction and increases the size of the cross section for renormali zation/factorization scales close to the mass of the leptoquarks. This leads to a rise of the lower bound on the mass of scalar leptoquarks by up to 15 GeV with respect to earlier analyses.