NLO Electroweak Corrections to Higgs Boson Production at Hadron Colliders

TL;DR

This paper calculates the complete next-to-leading order electroweak corrections to Higgs boson production via gluon fusion at hadron colliders, providing more precise cross section predictions for LHC and Tevatron energies.

Contribution

It presents the first comprehensive NLO electroweak correction calculation for Higgs production via gluon fusion, including complex-mass scheme implementation and uncertainty estimation.

Findings

Electroweak corrections increase the cross section by about 5% at 120 GeV Higgs mass.

The corrections are significant for precise Higgs production predictions at colliders.

Uncertainty estimates depend on the factorization scheme used for electroweak effects.

Abstract

Results for the complete NLO electroweak corrections to Standard Model Higgs production via gluon fusion are included in the total cross section for hadronic collisions. Artificially large threshold effects are avoided working in the complex-mass scheme. The numerical impact at LHC (Tevatron) energies is explored for Higgs mass values up to 500 GeV (200 GeV). Assuming a complete factorization of the electroweak corrections, one finds a +5 % shift with respect to the NNLO QCD cross section for a Higgs mass of 120 GeV both at the LHC and the Tevatron. Adopting two different factorization schemes for the electroweak effects, an estimate of the corresponding total theoretical uncertainty is computed.