NLO mixed QCD-EW corrections to Higgs gluon fusion

TL;DR

This paper advances the theoretical understanding of Higgs production by computing NLO mixed QCD-electroweak corrections to gluon fusion, moving beyond previous approximations to include physical gauge boson masses.

Contribution

It provides the first analytic calculation of three-loop virtual corrections for mixed QCD-electroweak effects in Higgs production, improving the precision of theoretical predictions.

Findings

Analytic evaluation of three-loop virtual corrections completed.

Implementation of corrections in the soft-gluon approximation.

Enhanced accuracy in Higgs production cross section predictions.

Abstract

The study of the Higgs boson properties is one of the main tasks of contemporary high-energy physics. Among Higgs properties, its interaction with gluons is interesting since it can be facilitated by yet unknown elementary particles. One of the major sources of uncertainty in the theoretical description of $ggH$ coupling originates from mixed QCD-electroweak contributions. The NLO QCD corrections to these contributions were evaluated in the approximation where electroweak boson masses were considered to be significantly larger than the mass of the Higgs boson and it is desirable to compute these corrections for physical masses of the gauge bosons and the Higgs boson. We present a major step towards this goal and describe first the analytic evaluation of NLO mixed QCD-EW three-loop virtual corrections to $gg \to H$, and then their implementation in the evaluation of the total cross section for $gg \to H$ in the soft-gluon approximation for real corrections.