Two-loop electroweak corrections to Higgs production in proton-proton collisions

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the two-loop electroweak corrections to Higgs production via gluon fusion at the LHC, showing they increase the cross-section by 4-8%, comparable to QCD uncertainties.

Contribution

It provides a detailed calculation of electroweak corrections at two-loop level and discusses their implementation in Higgs production cross-section estimates.

Findings

Electroweak corrections increase the Higgs production cross-section by 4-8%.

The corrections are comparable to current QCD uncertainties.

Factorization of electroweak and QCD effects is assumed in the analysis.

Abstract

We study the impact of the two-loop electroweak corrections on the production of a Higgs boson via gluon-fusion in proton-proton collisions at LHC energies. We discuss the prescritpion to include the corrections to the hard scattering matrix element in the calculation of the hadronic cross-section sigma (p+p\to H+X). Under the hypothesis of factorization of the electroweak corrections with respect to the dominant soft and collinear QCD radiation, we observe an increase of the total cross-section from 4 to 8 %, for MH <=160 GeV. This increase is comparable with the present QCD uncertainties originating from hard scattering matrix elements.