Next-to-leading order QCD corrections to Higgs boson decay to quarkonium plus a photon

TL;DR

This paper calculates the NLO QCD corrections to Higgs decay into quarkonium plus a photon, revealing significant effects on decay widths and potential observability at the LHC for probing Yukawa couplings and new physics.

Contribution

It provides the first NLO QCD correction calculations for Higgs decay to quarkonium plus a photon, including both direct and indirect processes, enhancing theoretical understanding.

Findings

NLO corrections significantly reduce the direct decay width.

Indirect decay process dominates over direct decay.

Decay could be observed at the 14 TeV LHC, offering a probe for Yukawa couplings.

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the decay of Higgs boson to $J/\psi(\Upsilon)$ plus a photon based on NRQCD factorization. For the direct process, we calculate the decay width up to QCD NLO. We find that the decay width for process $H \to J/\psi(\Upsilon)+ \gamma$ direct production at the LO is significantly reduced by the NLO QCD corrections. For the indirect process, we calculate the $H \to \gamma^\ast\gamma$ with virtual $\gamma$ substantially decaying to $J/\psi(\Upsilon)$, including all the SM Feynman diagrams. The decay width of indirect production is much larger than the direct decay width. Since it is very clean in experiment, the $H \to J/\psi(\Upsilon)+ \gamma$ decay could be observable at a 14 TeV LHC and it also offers a new way to probe the Yukawa coupling and New Physics at the LHC.