Higgs production at NNLO in QCD: the VBF channel

TL;DR

This paper provides a detailed NNLO QCD calculation for Higgs production via vector boson fusion at hadron colliders, with high precision and discussion of uncertainties.

Contribution

It introduces a NNLO QCD calculation for VBF Higgs production using the structure function approach, improving theoretical accuracy.

Findings

Theoretical uncertainties are about 1-2%.

Parton distribution uncertainties are comparable.

The structure function approach is highly accurate.

Abstract

We present a phenomenological study for the production of the Higgs boson at next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in QCD via the vector boson fusion (VBF) process. After a general discussion about the different production channels of the Higgs, we show results for hadron colliders like LHC and Tevatron in VBF. The theoretical predictions are obtained using the structure function approach. This approximation turns out to be more accurate than the precision to which the VBF Higgs production channel can be considered a well defined process by itself and the theoretical uncertainty are of the order of 1-2%. The uncertainties due to parton distributions are also discussed and are estimated to be at the same level.