NLO Corrections to Light-Quark Mixed QCD-EW Contributions to Higgs Production

TL;DR

This paper calculates the exact next-to-leading order QCD corrections to light-quark mixed QCD-EW contributions in Higgs production via gluon fusion at LHC13, improving precision with a novel computational approach.

Contribution

It introduces a new method for computing two-loop real-emission matrix elements with exact EW-boson mass dependence in Higgs production.

Findings

Calculated NLO QCD corrections with exact EW mass dependence.

Provided the most precise estimate of Higgs production cross section including these contributions.

Demonstrated a stable and efficient numerical integration technique.

Abstract

We present for the first time the exact NLO QCD corrections to the light-quark part of the mixed QCD-EW contributions to Higgs production via gluon fusion at LHC13, with exact EW-boson mass dependence. The relevant two-loop real-emission matrix element is computed using a dynamic one-dimensional series expansion strategy whose stability and speed allows for a numerical phase-space integration using local IR subtraction counterterms. For $\mu_R=\mu_F=M_H$, we find: \begin{equation}\sigma^{(\alpha_s^2\alpha^2+\alpha_s^3\alpha^2)}_{g g\rightarrow H+X} = 1.467(2)^{\;+18.7\%}_{\;-14.6\%}\;(\mu_R\;\text{var.})\;\pm 2\%\;(\text{PDF}) \ \textrm{pb},\end{equation} which we use to provide the best result including an estimate of suppressed contributions: \begin{equation}\sigma^{(\text{EW},\textrm{best})}_{p p\rightarrow H+X} = 2.11 \pm 0.28 \ (\textrm{theory}) \ \mathrm{pb}.\end{equation}