Next-to-leading order QCD predictions for $Z^0 H^0 + {\rm jet}$ production at LHC

TL;DR

This paper provides comprehensive NLO QCD predictions for ZH production with a jet at the LHC, highlighting significant corrections and reduced scale uncertainties, and compares different scale choices for better accuracy.

Contribution

The study offers the first complete NLO QCD calculation for ZH+jet production at the LHC, including detailed distributions and scale dependence analysis.

Findings

NLO QCD corrections significantly modify cross sections.

NLO corrections reduce scale uncertainties.

The scale choice μ=μ_1 is more appropriate than μ=μ_0.

Abstract

We calculate the complete next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD corrections to the $Z^0H^0$ production in association with a jet at the LHC. We study the impacts of the NLO QCD radiative corrections to the integrated and differential cross sections and the dependence of the cross section on the factorization/renormalization scale. We present the transverse momentum distributions of the final $Z^0$-, Higgs-boson and leading-jet. We find that the NLO QCD corrections significantly modify the physical observables, and obviously reduce the scale uncertainty of the LO cross section. The QCD K-factors can be 1.183 and 1.180 at the $\sqrt{s}=14 TeV$ and $\sqrt{s}=7 TeV$ LHC respectively, when we adopt the inclusive event selection scheme with $p_{T,j}^{cut}=50 GeV$, $m_H=120 GeV$ and $\mu=\mu_r=\mu_f=\mu_0 \equiv 1/2(m_Z+m_H)$. Furthermore, we make the comparison between the two scale choices, $\mu=\mu_0$ and $\mu=\mu_1=1/2(E_{T}^{Z}+E_{T}^{H}+ \sum_{j}E_{T}^{jet})$, and find the scale choice $\mu=\mu_1$ seems to be more appropriate than the fixed scale $\mu=\mu_0$.