Higgs plus jet production in bottom quark annihilation at next-to-leading order

TL;DR

This paper studies Higgs production in association with a jet via bottom-quark annihilation, a process that becomes important in the MSSM at large tanβ. It computes NLO QCD corrections to the Higgs+jet distributions in the five-flavour scheme and validates the results with scale and scheme checks, providing insight into differential observables. By combining these NLO distributions with the NNLO inclusive cross section, the authors derive the NNLO cross section with an upper $p_T$ cut on the Higgs and analyze scale dependence and cut effects, highlighting the preferred factorization scale around $M_H/4$ in certain regions. The results offer phenomenological value for LHC analyses and set the stage for a fully differential NNLO Monte Carlo implementation.

Abstract

The cross section for Higgs+jet production in bottom quark annihilation is calculated through NLO QCD. The five-flavour scheme is used to derive this contribution to the Higgs+jet production cross section which becomes numerically important in the MSSM for large values of tan(beta). We present numerical results for a proton collider with 14 TeV center-of-mass energy. The NLO matrix elements for d(sigma)/d(pT) are then combined with the total inclusive cross section in order to derive the integrated cross section with a maximum cut on pT at next-to-next-to-leading order.

Figures (7)

• Figure 1: Leading order diagrams for associated $b\overline{b}h$ production in the (a) four and (b) five flavour scheme.
• Figure 2: Representative diagrams for each of the two leading order channels.
• Figure 3: (a) Higgs transverse momentum distribution at .9 LO (dashed) and .9 NLO (solid); (b) corresponding K-factor.
• Figure 4: (a) Higgs rapidity distribution at .9 LO (dashed) and .9 NLO (solid); (b) corresponding K-factor. Since the distribution is symmetric around $y=0$, only positive values of $y$ are shown.
• Figure 5: Scale dependence of the integrated cross section for $p_T>30$ GeV at $M_{\rm H}=120$ GeV. (a) $\mu_{\rm R}=M_{\rm H}$ fixed, $\mu_{\rm F}$ varies --- (b) $\mu_{\rm F}=M_{\rm H}$ fixed, $\mu_{\rm R}$ varies --- (c) $\mu_{\rm F}=M_{\rm H}/4$ fixed, $\mu_{\rm R}$ varies --- (d) same as (b), but with cut on $|y|<2$.