Scalar and pseudoscalar Higgs production in association with a top-antitop pair

TL;DR

This paper calculates scalar and pseudoscalar Higgs production with top-antitop pairs at NLO in QCD, incorporating parton showers, and applies the results to light Higgs scenarios at the LHC, demonstrating a fully automated event generation approach.

Contribution

It introduces the first phenomenological application of aMC@NLO for Higgs production with top pairs at NLO, including automation and detailed differential distributions.

Findings

Total production rates for light Higgs at LHC provided.

Differential distributions for Higgs and top decay products analyzed.

First automated NLO event generation for this process demonstrated.

Abstract

We present the calculation of scalar and pseudoscalar Higgs production in association with a top-antitop pair to the next-to-leading order (NLO) accuracy in QCD, interfaced with parton showers according to the MC@NLO formalism. We apply our results to the cases of light and very light Higgs boson production at the LHC, giving results for total rates as well as for sample differential distributions, relevant to the Higgs, to the top quarks, and to their decay products. This work constitutes the first phenomenological application of aMC@NLO, a fully automated approach to complete event generation at NLO in QCD.