NLO QCD and parton-shower effects for Higgs-boson production in association with a hard photon via vector-boson fusion

TL;DR

This paper implements Higgs-boson production with an associated photon via vector-boson fusion, matching NLO QCD corrections with parton showers, and studies the effects of different isolation strategies.

Contribution

It provides a POWHEG BOX implementation for Higgs plus photon production via VBF, including NLO QCD corrections and parton-shower matching, with analysis of various isolation methods.

Findings

Parton-shower and non-perturbative effects have minimal impact on Higgs observables.

Larger corrections are observed in distributions of sub-leading jets.

Photon isolation strategies have little effect on sensitive observables.

Abstract

We present an implementation of Higgs-boson production in association with a hard, isolated photon via vector-boson fusion in the framework of the POWHEG BOX for the consistent matching of next-to-leading order QCD corrections with parton showers. The impact of parton-shower settings and non-perturbative effects on Higgs observables is studied and found to be small, while larger corrections are found for distributions of the sub-leading jets. Various approaches for the isolation of the photon are explored. For typical setups, the isolation strategy is found to have little impact on even the most sensitive observables.