Anomalous Higgs boson couplings in weak boson fusion production at NNLO in QCD

TL;DR

This paper investigates how anomalous Higgs-vector boson couplings affect weak boson fusion production at NNLO in QCD, improving the precision of theoretical predictions for better experimental analysis.

Contribution

It extends the theoretical description of Higgs production in weak boson fusion by including anomalous couplings and NNLO QCD corrections simultaneously.

Findings

NLO QCD predictions are sufficiently precise for studying anomalous couplings.

NNLO QCD corrections have a marginal impact on NLO results.

Availability of NNLO enhances confidence in NLO-based conclusions.

Abstract

The production of Higgs bosons in weak boson fusion has the second largest cross section among Higgs-production processes at the LHC. As such, this process plays an important role in detailed studies of Higgs interactions with vector bosons. In this paper we extend the available description of Higgs boson production in weak boson fusion by considering anomalous $HVV$ interactions and NNLO QCD radiative corrections at the same time. We find that, while leading order QCD predictions are too uncertain to allow for detailed studies of the anomalous couplings, NLO QCD results are sufficiently precise, most of the time. The NNLO QCD corrections alter the NLO QCD predictions only marginally, but their availability enhances the credibility of conclusions based on NLO QCD computations.