Top-mass effects in differential Higgs production through gluon fusion at order \alpha_s^4

TL;DR

This paper investigates the impact of finite top quark mass effects on differential Higgs production via gluon fusion at next-to-leading order, finding the heavy-top approximation is accurate within 3% for Higgs transverse momentum below 150 GeV.

Contribution

It calculates subleading terms in 1/m_t and assesses their effect on Higgs transverse momentum and rapidity distributions at order α_s^4.

Findings

Heavy-top limit valid within 2-3% for p_T < 150 GeV

Finite top mass effects are small at NLO

Differential K-factor closely matches heavy-top approximation

Abstract

Effects from a finite top quark mass on differential distributions in the Higgs+jet production cross section through gluon fusion are studied at next-to-leading order in the strong coupling, i.e. $O(\alpha_s^4)$. Terms formally subleading in $1/m_t$ are calculated, and their influence on the transverse momentum and rapidity distribution of the Higgs boson are evaluated. We find that, for the differential K-factor, the heavy-top limit is valid at the 2-3% level as long as the transverse momentum of the Higgs remains below about 150 GeV.