Higgs production in gluon fusion at NNLO for finite top quark mass

TL;DR

This paper calculates the Higgs production cross section via gluon fusion at NNLO, incorporating finite top quark mass effects, and finds the heavy-top approximation is highly accurate within 1%.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed NNLO evaluation of finite top mass effects in Higgs production, improving the precision of theoretical predictions.

Findings

Heavy-top limit approximates full result within 1%

Asymptotic expansions used below threshold

Results match high-energy limit from kT factorization

Abstract

The evaluation of the top quark mass suppressed terms to the Higgs production cross section in gluon fusion at next-to-next-to-leading order is reported on. In the region below threshold, the Feynman diagrams are evaluated using asymptotic expansions. The result is then matched to the high-energy limit derived from kT factorization. The result shows that the heavy-top limit used so far approximates the full result to better than 1%.