NLO QCD corrections to Higgs boson production in association with a top quark pair and a jet

TL;DR

This paper calculates the NLO QCD corrections for Higgs production with a top quark pair and a jet, improving accuracy and reducing scale dependence, using advanced computational techniques.

Contribution

It provides the first complete NLO QCD calculation for Higgs plus top pair plus jet production with full mass dependence, employing novel integrand reduction methods.

Findings

Significant reduction in theoretical scale uncertainty.

Detailed differential distributions for Higgs and top quark observables.

Validation of new computational techniques for virtual corrections.

Abstract

We present the calculation of the cross section for Higgs boson production in association with a top quark pair plus one jet, at next-to-leading-order (NLO) accuracy in QCD. All mass dependence is retained without recurring to any approximation. After including the complete NLO QCD corrections, we observe a strong reduction in the scale dependence of the result. We also show distributions for the invariant mass of the top quark pair, with and without the additional jet, and for the transverse momentum and the pseudorapidity of the Higgs boson. Results for the virtual contributions are obtained with a novel reduction approach based on integrand decomposition via Laurent expansion, as implemented in the library Ninja. Cross sections and differential distributions are obtained with an automated setup which combines the GoSam and Sherpa frameworks.