Production of scalar and pseudo-scalar Higgs bosons to next-to-next-to-leading order at hadron colliders

TL;DR

This paper extends NNLO calculations for Higgs boson production to include pseudo-scalar cases, providing more accurate cross section predictions relevant for future collider experiments.

Contribution

It presents the first NNLO calculation for pseudo-scalar Higgs production, expanding upon previous scalar Higgs results with detailed computational methods.

Findings

NNLO corrections are about 9% for scalar Higgs at 300 GeV

Pseudo-scalar Higgs NNLO corrections reach 22% at 300 GeV

Total cross section deviations are 2-6%, impacting precision measurements.

Abstract

We consider the production of intermediate-mass CP-even and CP-odd Higgs bosons in proton-proton and proton-anti-proton collisions. We extend the recently published results for the complete next-to-next-to-leading order calculation for a scalar Higgs boson to the pseudo-scalar case and present details of the calculation that might be useful for similar future investigations. The result is based on an expansion in the limit of a heavy top quark mass and a subsequent matching to the expression obtained in the limit of infinite energy. For a Higgs boson mass of 120 GeV the deviation from the infinite-top quark mass result is small. For 300 GeV, however, the next-to-next-to-leading order corrections for a scalar Higgs boson exceed the effective-theory result by about 9% which increases to 22% in the pseudo-scalar case. Thus in this mass range the effect on the total cross section amounts to about 2% and 6%, respectively, which may be relevant in future precision studies.