Top-Quark Mediated Effects in Hadronic Higgs-Strahlung

TL;DR

This paper evaluates new top-quark loop effects on Higgs-Strahlung production cross sections at hadron colliders, finding small but non-negligible corrections that refine previous predictions for Tevatron and LHC energies.

Contribution

It introduces and quantifies previously neglected order α_s^2 top-quark mediated contributions to Higgs-Strahlung cross sections in the Standard Model.

Findings

Corrections are below 1% for HW at Tevatron

Corrections are 1-2% for HZ at Tevatron

Corrections are 1-3% at the LHC

Abstract

Novel contributions to the total inclusive cross section for Higgs-Strahlung in the Standard Model at hadron colliders are evaluated. Although formally of order $\alpha_s^2$, they have not been taken into account in previous NNLO predictions. The terms under consideration are induced by Higgs radiation off top-quark loops and thus proportional to the top-quark Yukawa coupling. At the Tevatron, their effects to HW production are below 1% in the relevant Higgs mass range, while for HZ production, we find corrections between about 1% and 2%. At the LHC, the contribution of the newly evaluated terms to the cross section is typically of the order of 1%-3%. Based on these results, we provide updated predictions for the total inclusive Higgs-Strahlung cross section at the Tevatron and the LHC.