Top-quark mass effects in H+jet and H+2 jets production

TL;DR

This paper calculates Higgs production with one or two jets, including top-quark mass effects, and compares the results to the infinite mass approximation, revealing improved accuracy and corrections.

Contribution

It provides the first exact top-quark mass treatment for H+jet and an improved approximation for H+2 jets, correcting previous results and enhancing theoretical predictions.

Findings

H+jet calculation extends previous work and corrects earlier errors.

Good agreement between finite top-mass results and infinite mass limit after rescaling.

New differential cross section results for Higgs plus jets production.

Abstract

We present calculations of Higgs boson production via gluon-gluon fusion in association with one or two additional jets at next-to-leading order in QCD. The calculation of H+jet is exact in the treatment of the top-quark mass, whereas for the H+2 jets calculation the two-loop virtual amplitudes are approximated via a reweighting with leading-order mass effects, while keeping all top-quark mass effects in the real radiation contributions. For H+jet production, this study extends a previous calculation, revealing an error in the previous results. For total and differential cross sections, we present new results and compare the QCD corrections with the infinite top-mass limit, for which we find a strikingly good agreement if all amplitudes are rescaled by the leading-order mass dependence.