On top quark mass effects to $gg\to ZH$ at NLO

TL;DR

This paper calculates next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the gluon-gluon fusion process producing a Z and Higgs boson, incorporating top quark mass effects to improve theoretical predictions.

Contribution

It provides a detailed computation of top quark mass corrections to $gg\to ZH$ at NLO using asymptotic expansion, and implements these in a publicly available C++ program.

Findings

Good convergence of mass corrections below top quark threshold

Mass corrections account for approximately a quarter of the total cross section

Results confirm previous literature in the effective-theory approach

Abstract

We compute next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the process $gg\to ZH$. In the effective-theory approach we confirm the results in the literature. We consider top quark mass corrections via an asymptotic expansion and show that there is a good convergence below the top quark threshold which describes approximately {\num a quarter} of the total cross section. Our corrections are implemented in the publicly available {\tt C++} program {\tt ggzh}.