Gluon-fusion Higgs production at NNLO for a non-standard Higgs sector

TL;DR

This paper calculates the NNLO gluon-fusion Higgs production cross section in models with heavy quarks, extending the Standard Model, and analyzes the effects of additional quark multiplets and higher-order corrections.

Contribution

It derives the Wilson coefficient for the gluon-Higgs vertex at NNLO in models with arbitrary heavy quarks, including vector-like quarks, and assesses their impact on Higgs production.

Findings

Leading-order cross section suppression is independent of the number of vector-like quarks.

QCD and electroweak corrections significantly affect the cross section at three loops.

Bottom-quark contributions are evaluated at two loops.

Abstract

We consider an extension of the Standard Model with an arbitrary number of heavy quarks having general couplings to the Higgs boson. We construct an effective Lagrangian integrating out quarks that are heavier than half the mass of the Higgs boson and compute the Wilson coefficient for the effective gluon-Higgs vertex through NNLO. We apply our result to a composite Higgs model with vector-like quarks coupling to the third generation quarks. In the heavy quark-mass approximation, we show that the suppression of the leading-order cross section with respect to the Standard Model does not depend on the number of vector-like multiplets introduced. We analyse the effects of QCD and electroweak corrections through three loops, as well as bottom-quark contributions through two loops.