NNLO QCD results for diphoton production at the LHC and the Tevatron

TL;DR

This paper presents a detailed calculation of NNLO QCD corrections for diphoton production at the LHC and Tevatron, crucial for accurate Higgs boson background modeling.

Contribution

It introduces a fully-differential NNLO QCD calculation for diphoton production using the q_T subtraction method, implemented in a flexible Monte Carlo program.

Findings

NNLO corrections significantly impact diphoton production rates.

The results improve background estimates for Higgs to gamma gamma searches.

The method allows for arbitrary kinematic cuts and detailed distribution analysis.

Abstract

We consider direct diphoton production in hadron collisions. We compute the next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) QCD radiative corrections at the fully-differential level. Our calculation is based on the q_T subtraction formalism and it is implemented in a parton level Monte Carlo program, which allows the user to apply arbitrary kinematical cuts on the final-state photons and the associated jet activity, and to compute the corresponding distributions in the form of bin histograms. We present selected numerical results related to Higgs boson searches and diphoton studies performed at the LHC and the Tevatron, and we show how the NNLO corrections to diphoton production are relevant to understand the main background of the decay channel (H -> gamma gamma) of the Higgs boson H.