Next-to-Leading Order virtual correction to Higgs-induced DIS

TL;DR

This paper computes the NLO virtual correction to the Higgs-induced DIS coefficient function in the infinite top-mass limit, addressing technical challenges to enable small-x logarithm resummation in kt-factorization.

Contribution

It provides the first calculation of the NLO virtual correction in light-cone gauge with off-shell gluons, crucial for small-x resummation in Higgs DIS.

Findings

Derived the NLO virtual correction in the specified framework.

Addressed and managed spurious singularities and UV-counterterm definitions.

Enabled future resummation of small-x logarithms for Higgs-induced DIS.

Abstract

We calculate the Next-to-Leading Order (NLO) virtual correction to the Higgs-induced DIS coefficient function in the infinite top-mass limit. Since we want to use this result in the framework of kt-factorization to resum small-x logarithms up to Next-to-Leading-Logarithm (NLL), we work in light-cone gauge and we keep the incoming gluon off-shell. This choice raises many challenging points like the presence of spurious singularities and a different definition for the UV-counterterms. This calculation is a necessary ingredient for the coefficient function that will be used to resum up to NLL small-x logarithms for this process.