Gluon Distribution Functions and Higgs Boson Production at Moderate Transverse Momentum

TL;DR

This paper explores the role of azimuthal correlated gluon distributions in Higgs boson production at moderate transverse momentum, highlighting their contribution and consistency across different theoretical frameworks.

Contribution

It introduces the significance of azimuthal correlated gluon distributions in Higgs production and compares their effects within TMD and naive k_t-factorization formalisms.

Findings

Azimuthal correlated gluon distribution contributes to Higgs production.

Agreement between TMD and naive k_t-factorization in dilute regions.

Potential breakdown of naive k_t-factorization in dense media.

Abstract

We investigate the gluon distribution functions and their contributions to the Higgs boson production in pp collisions in the transverse momentum dependent factorization formalism. In addition to the usual azimuthal symmetric transverse momentum dependent gluon distribution, we find that the azimuthal correlated gluon distribution also contributes to the Higgs boson production. This explains recent findings on the additional contribution in the transverse momentum resummation for the Higgs boson production as compared to that for electroweak boson production processes. We further examine the small-x naive k_t-factorization in the dilute region and find that the azimuthal correlated gluon distribution contribution is consistently taken into account, and the result agrees with the transverse momentum dependent factorization formalism. We comment on the possible breakdown of the naive k_t-factorization in the dense medium region, due to the unique behaviors for the gluon distributions.