Higgs Production via Weak Boson Fusion in the Standard Model and the MSSM

TL;DR

This paper provides comprehensive one-loop electroweak and supersymmetric corrections to Higgs production via weak boson fusion at the LHC, highlighting their significance relative to QCD corrections and their impact on cross sections.

Contribution

It presents the first complete one-loop electroweak corrections for Standard Model Higgs production and calculates dominant supersymmetric corrections in the MSSM, integrating these into a Monte Carlo program.

Findings

Electroweak corrections are as significant as QCD corrections after cuts.

Standard Model corrections shift the cross section by about 5%.

Supersymmetric corrections can exceed 10% away from the decoupling limit.

Abstract

Weak boson fusion is expected to be an important Higgs production channel at the LHC. Complete one-loop results for weak boson fusion in the Standard Model have been obtained by calculating the full virtual electroweak corrections and photon radiation and implementing these results into the public Monte Carlo program VBFNLO which includes the NLO QCD corrections. Furthermore the dominant supersymmetric one-loop corrections to neutral Higgs production, in the general case where the MSSM includes complex phases, have been calculated. These results have been combined with all one-loop corrections of Standard Model type and with the propagator-type corrections from the Higgs sector of the MSSM up to the two-loop level. Within the Standard Model the electroweak corrections are found to be as important as the QCD corrections after the application of appropriate cuts. The corrections yield a shift in the cross section of order 5% for a Higgs of mass 100-200 GeV, confirming the result obtained previously in the literature. For the production of a light Higgs boson in the MSSM the Standard Model result is recovered in the decoupling limit, while the loop contributions from superpartners to the production of neutral MSSM Higgs bosons can give rise to corrections in excess of 10% away from the decoupling region.