Fiducial cross sections for Higgs boson production in association with a jet at next-to-next-to-leading order in QCD

Fabrizio Caola,Markus Schulze,Kirill Melnikov

doi:10.1103/physrevd.92.074032

Abstract

We extend the recent computation of Higgs boson production in association with a jet through next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative QCD by including decays of the Higgs boson to electroweak vector bosons. This allows us to compute fiducial cross sections and kinematic distributions including realistic selection criteria for the Higgs boson decay products. As an illustration, we present results for $pp \to H + j \to \gamma \gamma + j$ closely following the ATLAS 8 TeV analysis and for $pp \to H+ j \to W W + j \to e^+ \mu^- \nu \bar \nu + j $ in a CMS-like 13 TeV setup.

Highlights

Studies of the Higgs boson discovered by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations [1,2] will be at the focus of the experimental program during Run II of the LHC
We extended the recent next-tonext-to-leading order (NNLO) QCD computation of the H þ j production in proton collisions by including decays of the Higgs bosons to electroweak gauge bosons H → γγ, H → WþW− and H → ZZ
Leptonic decays of Z’s and W’s, with all spin correlations, are fully accounted for. This allowed us to calculate fiducial volume cross sections and various kinematic distributions through NNLO in perturbative QCD in a manner that is fully consistent with selection criteria applied in experiments

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Studies of the Higgs boson discovered by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations [1,2] will be at the focus of the experimental program during Run II of the LHC. In contrast to many other Run I LHC measurements, the ATLAS Collaboration measured fiducial volume cross sections and a variety of kinematic distributions in the process pp → H þ jets [5]. The inclusive production cross section of the Higgs boson has recently been computed through next-tonext-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative QCD [6]. This computation refers to the total cross sections and cannot be used for the direct comparison with fiducial volume measurements without extrapolation. This is what we do in this paper for a variety of the Higgs boson decay modes Once this is done, it becomes possible to calculate fiducial volume cross sections and kinematic distributions and directly compare with experimental measurements.

Theory

THE RESULTS

CONCLUSIONS