Variable flavor number parton distributions and weak gauge and Higgs boson production at hadron colliders at next-to-next-to-leading order of QCD

Abstract

Based on our recent next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) dynamical parton distributions as obtained in the 'fixed flavor number scheme', we generate radiatively parton distributions in the 'variable flavor number scheme' where the heavy-quark flavors (c,b,t) also become massless partons within the nucleon. Only within this latter factorization scheme are NNLO calculations feasible at present, since the required partonic subprocesses are only available in the approximation of massless initial-state partons. The NNLO predictions for gauge boson production are typically larger (by more than 1{sigma}) than the next-to-leading order (NLO) ones, and rates at LHC energies can be predicted with an accuracy of about 5%, whereas at Tevatron they are more than 2{sigma} above the NLO ones. The NNLO predictions for standard model Higgs-boson production via the dominant gluon fusion process have a total (parton distribution function and scale) uncertainty of about 10% at LHC which almost doubles at the lower Tevatron energies; they are typically about 20% larger than the ones at NLO but the total uncertainty bands overlap.