Long range correlation in Higgs boson plus two jets production at the LHC

Abstract

We study Higgs boson plus two high energy jets production at the LHC in the kinematics where the two jets are well separated in rapidity. The partonic processes are dominated by the t-channel weak boson fusion (WBF) and gluon fusion (GF) contributions. We derive the associated QCD resummation formalism for the correlation analysis where the total transverse momentum q_\perp of the Higgs boson and two jets is small. Because of different color structures, the resummation results lead to distinguished behaviors: the WBF contribution peaks at relative low q_\perp while all GF channel contributions are strongly de-correlated and spread to a much wider q_\perp range. By applying a kinematic cut on q_\perp, one can effectively increase the WBF signal to the GF background by a significant factor. This greatly strengthens the ability to investigate the WBF channel in Higgs boson production and study the couplings of Higgs to electroweak bosons.