$HZ\gamma$ production at $14~{\rm TeV}$ LHC in next-to-leading order QCD

TL;DR

This paper calculates the production of a Higgs, Z boson, and photon at the 14 TeV LHC, including next-to-leading order QCD corrections, highlighting their importance for precise measurements of the $HZ\gamma$ coupling.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed NLO QCD analysis of $pp ightarrow HZ\gamma + X$ at 14 TeV LHC, including decay distributions and scale dependence.

Findings

NLO QCD corrections significantly enhance the cross section.

The K-factor varies with observables and phase space.

Proper constraints on lepton-pair mass are necessary for background reduction.

Abstract

We investigate the process $pp \rightarrow HZ\gamma + X$ at the $\sqrt{s}=14~{\rm TeV}$ LHC up to the QCD next-to-leading order (NLO), and discuss the kinematic distributions of final products after on-shell Higgs and $Z$-boson decays by adopting the narrow width approximation. The dependence of the leading order (LO) and the QCD NLO corrected integrated cross sections on the factorization/renormalization scale is studied. Our results show that the LO integrated cross section and kinematic distributions are significantly enhanced by the NLO QCD corrections, and the NLO QCD $K$-factor strongly depends on the observables and phase space. We conclude that in precision experimental data analyse for probing the $HZ\gamma$ coupling we should consider the NLO QCD corrections and put proper constraints on lepton-pair invariant mass to reduce the background.