Finite-top-mass effects in NNLO Higgs production

TL;DR

This paper develops an accurate approximation for NNLO Higgs production cross section considering finite top mass effects, significantly reducing theoretical uncertainties at the LHC.

Contribution

It introduces a method to match finite top mass corrections with the infinite mass limit, improving the precision of Higgs production predictions.

Findings

Large corrections at high partonic energies

Moderate overall correction at LHC energies

Uncertainty reduced from percent to per mille level

Abstract

We construct an accurate approximation to the exact NNLO cross section for Higgs production in gluon-gluon fusion by matching the dominant finite top mass corrections recently computed by us to the known result in the infinite mass limit. The ensuing corrections to the partonic cross section are very large when the center of mass energy of the partonic collision is much larger than the Higgs mass, but lead to a moderate correction at the percent level to the total Higgs production cross section at the LHC. Our computation thus reduces the uncertainty related to these corrections at the LHC from the percent to the per mille level.