Gluon-Induced Weak Boson Fusion

TL;DR

This paper calculates gluon-induced contributions to Higgs production via weak boson fusion, showing they have minimal impact on the signal under typical experimental cuts, thus affirming the robustness of WBF measurements.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed computation of gluon-induced weak boson fusion contributions at NNLO, assessing their impact on experimental signals.

Findings

Gluon-induced terms are about percent-level corrections to NLO WBF rates.

Applying WBF cuts further suppress these contributions.

Color exchange effects do not significantly affect the WBF signal.

Abstract

The gluon-gluon induced terms for Higgs production through weak boson fusion (WBF) are computed. Formally, these are of NNLO in the strong coupling constant. This is the lowest order at which non-zero color exchange occurs between the scattering quarks, leading to a color field and thus additional hadronic activity between the outgoing jets. Using a minimal set of cuts, the numerical impact of these terms is at the percent level with respect to the NLO rate for weak boson fusion. Applying the so-called WBF cuts leads to an even stronger suppression, so that we do not expect a significant deterioration of the WFB signal by these color exchange effects.