Soft gluon resummation for gluon fusion $ZH$ production

TL;DR

This paper investigates the impact of soft gluon effects on Higgs plus Z boson production via gluon fusion at the LHC, providing precise theoretical predictions for cross-sections and invariant mass distributions.

Contribution

It introduces a next-to-leading logarithmic resummation framework for soft gluons in gluon fusion ZH production, including next-to-soft effects, enhancing prediction accuracy.

Findings

Soft gluon effects significantly modify the total cross-section.

Resummation improves the precision of invariant mass distribution predictions.

Results are relevant for upcoming LHC and future collider analyses.

Abstract

We examine the effects of soft gluons on Higgs boson production in association with a $Z$ boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Utilizing the universal cusp anomalous dimensions and splitting kernels, we analyze effects of soft gluons on the gluon fusion $ZH$ process, focusing on the total production cross-section as well as the invariant mass distribution at the next-to-leading logarithmic level. Additionally, we estimate the next-to-soft effects on this subprocess to the same level of accuracy. A detailed phenomenological analysis is performed for the $13.6$ TeV LHC. Finally, combining these results with those from other subprocesses, we provide comprehensive predictions for the $ZH$ production cross-section and the invariant mass distribution that will be valuable for comparison with experimental data from the upcoming LHC run as well as the future hadron colliders.