Finite top-mass effects in gluon-induced Higgs production with a jet-veto at NNLO

TL;DR

This paper investigates the impact of finite top quark mass effects on Higgs production with jets via gluon fusion at NNLO, demonstrating the validity of the heavy-top approximation up to certain energy scales and introducing a matching procedure for improved predictions.

Contribution

The study provides a detailed analysis of top-mass effects at NNLO and NLO, validating the heavy-top approximation and proposing a matching method for differential distributions.

Findings

Heavy-top approximation is valid within 0.5% up to 300 GeV jet-veto cuts.

Asymptotic expansion of the jet-vetoed cross section converges well.

Matching procedure enables reliable top-mass effect predictions for Higgs+jet rates.

Abstract

Effects from a finite top quark mass on the H+n-jet cross section through gluon fusion are studied for $n=0/n\ge 1$ at NNLO/NLO QCD. For this purpose, sub-leading terms in $1/m_t$ are calculated. We show that the asymptotic expansion of the jet-vetoed cross section at NNLO is very well behaved and that the heavy-top approximation is valid at the five permille level up to jet-veto cuts of 300 GeV. For the inclusive Higgs+jet rate, we introduce a matching procedure that allows for a reliable prediction of the top-mass effects using the expansion in $1/m_t$. The quality of the effective field theory to evaluate differential K-factors for the distribution of the hardest jet is found to be better than 1-2% as long as the transverse momentum of the jet is integrated out or remains below about 150 GeV.