Associated production of Higgs boson and heavy quarks at the LHC: predictions with the kt-factorization

TL;DR

This paper predicts Higgs boson production with heavy quarks at the LHC using the kt-factorization approach, calculating off-shell gluon fusion processes and comparing results with traditional collinear QCD predictions.

Contribution

First calculation of the matrix element squared for off-shell gluon fusion producing Higgs with heavy quarks in the kt-factorization framework.

Findings

Predicted total and differential cross sections for bbH and ttH production.

Quantitative comparison with collinear NLO QCD predictions.

Assessment of non-negligible q+q mechanisms in Higgs production.

Abstract

In the framework of the kt-factorization approach, we study the production of Higgs bosons associated with a heavy (beauty or top) quark pair at the CERN LHC collider conditions. Our consideration is based mainly on the off-shell gluon-gluon fusion suprocess g + g -> Q + Q + H. The corresponding matrix element squared have been calculated for the first time. We investigate the total and differential cross sections of bbH and ttH production taking into account also the non-negligible contribution from the q + q -> Q + Q + H mechanism. In the numerical calculations we use the unintegrated gluon distributions obtained from the CCFM evolution equation. Our results are compared with the leading and next-to-leading order predictions of the collinear factorization of QCD.