Heavy-quark mass effects in Higgs plus jets production

TL;DR

This paper investigates Higgs boson production via gluon fusion at the 13 TeV LHC, emphasizing the importance of including heavy-quark mass effects and sample merging for accurate predictions of observables.

Contribution

It provides a next-to-leading order QCD calculation of Higgs plus jets production with heavy-quark mass effects and sample merging, matched to PYTHIA8, for realistic LHC predictions.

Findings

Both merging and heavy-quark masses significantly affect predictions.

Including heavy-quark effects improves the accuracy of differential distributions.

Sample merging is essential for reliable inclusive rate calculations.

Abstract

We study the production of a Standard Model Higgs boson in the gluon-fusion channel at the 13 TeV LHC. Our results are accurate to the next-to-leading order in QCD, bar for the lack of some two-loop amplitudes, for up to two extra jets and are matched to the PYTHIA8 Monte Carlo. We address the impact, at the level of inclusive rates and of differential distributions, of the merging of samples characterised by different final-state multiplicities, and of the effects induced by top and bottom masses through heavy-quark loop diagrams. We find that both the merging and the heavy-quark masses must be included in the calculation in order to realistically predict observables of experimental interest.