The threshold region for Higgs production in gluon fusion

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the effective partonic kinematics for Higgs production via gluon fusion at the LHC, assessing the validity of approximations and the importance of finite top mass corrections for accurate predictions.

Contribution

It provides a quantitative assessment of the kinematic region relevant for Higgs production, evaluating the adequacy of the large top mass approximation and the impact of finite top mass corrections.

Findings

Finite top mass corrections are likely important for accurate Higgs phenomenology.

The large top mass approximation may not be sufficient for a light Higgs at 125 GeV.

Results are argued to hold to all orders in perturbation theory.

Abstract

We provide a quantitative determination of the effective partonic kinematics for Higgs production in gluon fusion in terms of the collider energy at the LHC. We use the result to assess, as a function of the Higgs mass, whether the large top mass approximation is adequate and whether Sudakov resummation is advantageous. We argue that our results hold to all perturbative orders. Based on it, we conclude that the full inclusion of finite top mass corrections is likely to be important for accurate phenomenology for a light Higgs with m_H ~ 125 GeV at the LHC with sqrt{s} = 14 TeV.