Reanalysis of the Higgs-boson decay $H \to gg$ up to $\alpha_s^6$-order level using the principle of maximum conformality

TL;DR

This paper applies the principle of maximum conformality to reanalyze the Higgs decay into gluons, incorporating up to the sixth order in alpha_s, to improve the precision and reduce theoretical uncertainties in the decay width prediction.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed reanalysis of Higgs to gluon decay using the PMC at alpha_s^6 order, significantly reducing residual scale dependence and improving prediction accuracy.

Findings

Residual scale dependence is greatly suppressed with alpha_s^6 order.

Predicted decay width: 337.9 ± 1.7_{-0.1}^{+0.9} ± 1.9 KeV.

Enhanced perturbative stability of the decay width calculation.

Abstract

Using the newly available $\alpha_s^6$-order QCD correction to the Higgs decay channel $H\to gg$, we make a detailed discussion on the perturbative properties of the decay width $\Gamma(H\to gg)$ by using the principle of maximum conformality (PMC). The PMC provides a way to eliminate the conventional renormalization scheme-and-scale ambiguities, which uses the renormalization group equation to determine the optimal running behavior of the strong coupling constant at each order via a recursive way. Even though there is no ambiguity for setting the renormalization scale, there is residual scale dependence for the PMC predictions due to unknown high-order terms. Using the $\alpha_s^6$-order terms, the somewhat larger residual renormalization scale dependence at the $\alpha_s^5$-order level observed in our previous work can be greatly suppressed, which shows $\Gamma (H\to gg)\rm{|_{ PMC }} =337.9 \pm1.7_{-0.1}^{+0.9}\pm1.9$ KeV, where the first error is caused by the Higgs mass uncertainty $\Delta M_{H}=0.24$ GeV, the second one is the residual scale dependence by varying the initial choice of scale within the region of $\left[{M_H}/{2},4 M_H\right]$, and the third one is the conservative prediction of unknown high-order contributions.