Higgs boson production in association with a jet at next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative QCD

Abstract

We report on a calculation of the cross-section for Higgs boson production in gluon fusion in association with a hadronic jet at next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in perturbative QCD. The computational technique is discussed in detail. We show explicitly how to employ known soft and collinear limits of scattering amplitudes to construct subtraction terms for NNLO computations. Cancellation of singularities is demonstrated numerically for the collinearly-subtracted gg → H + j cross-section through NNLO and the finite σ gg→Hj cross-section is computed through $ \mathcal{O}\left( {\alpha_s^5} \right) $ as a function of the center-of-mass collision energy. We present numerical results for the gluon-fusion contribution to Higgs production in association with a jet at the LHC. The NNLO QCD corrections significantly reduce the residual scale dependence of the cross-section. The computational method that we describe in this paper is applicable to the calculation of NNLO QCD corrections to any other 2 → 2 process at a hadron collider without modification.