Heavy-quark mass effects in Higgs boson production at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper investigates how finite top and bottom quark masses influence Higgs boson production via gluon fusion at the LHC, extending differential cross section calculations to include mass effects up to third order in alpha_S.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed computation of the Higgs transverse momentum spectrum including finite heavy-quark mass effects up to O(alpha_S^3).

Findings

Mass effects significantly alter the Higgs transverse momentum distribution.

Updated numerical tools incorporate these mass effects for more accurate predictions.

The study discusses challenges when heavy-quark masses are much smaller than the Higgs mass.

Abstract

We study the impact of heavy-quark masses in Higgs boson production through gluon fusion at the LHC. We extend previous computations of the fully differential cross section and of the transverse momentum spectrum of the Higgs boson by taking into account the finite top- and bottom-quark masses up to O(alpha_S^3). We also discuss the issues arising when the heavy-quark mass is much smaller than the Higgs mass. Our results are implemented in updated versions of the HNNLO and HRes numerical programs.