Electroweak and finite quark-mass effects on the Higgs boson transverse momentum distribution

Abstract

We perform a detailed study of the various one-loop contributions leading to production of the standard model Higgs boson in association with a hard jet. This production mode contributes to the current Tevatron exclusion limit of the standard model Higgs with $160\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{GeV}\ensuremath{\le}{M}_{H}\ensuremath{\le}170\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{GeV}$, and will also be important for discovery and interpretation of new scalar bosons at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). We include top- and bottom-quark initiated contributions, maintaining the exact dependence on the quark masses, and also study previously neglected $W$- and $Z$-boson mediated effects which shift the $qg$ and $q\overline{q}$ production modes. We consider the deviations from commonly used approximations for the Higgs boson transverse momentum spectrum caused by the finite top-quark mass, bottom-quark contributions, and electroweak gauge boson terms. All three effects act to decrease the Higgs boson transverse momentum distribution for observable momenta, with shifts reaching $\ensuremath{-}8%$ at the Tevatron and $\ensuremath{-}30%$ at the LHC. The shifts have a significant dependence on the Higgs ${p}_{T}$, and are especially important if large momenta are selected by experimental cuts.