Resummation Prediction on Higgs and Vector Boson Associated Production with a Jet Veto at the LHC

TL;DR

This work develops a next-to-next-to-leading-logarithmic (NNLL) resummation for Higgs–vector boson ($HV$) associated production at the LHC with a jet veto, using soft-collinear effective theory (SCET) in the collinear anomaly framework and matching to QCD NLO results. It derives a factorized, RG-improved cross section in terms of a hard function $\mathcal{H}$, beam functions, and a soft contribution, with explicit treatment of the jet veto constraints via the beam-function anomaly $F_{q\bar{q}}$ and $d_2^{\rm veto}(R)$, including the $R$-dependence. Numerical results show that increasing the veto scale $p_T^{\rm veto}$ or jet radius $R$ reduces resummation and scale uncertainties, with typical NNLL scale uncertainties around 6–7% for $p_T^{\rm veto}=25$ GeV and $R=0.4$–$0.5$, and PDF uncertainties around 7%. The approach yields improved, stable predictions for invariant-mass distributions and jet-vetoed cross sections at 13 and 14 TeV, supporting precision Higgs measurements and background suppression studies at the LHC.

Abstract

We investigate the resummation effects for the SM Higgs and vector boson associated production at the LHC with a jet veto in soft-collinear effective theory using "collinear anomalous" formalism. We calculate the jet vetoed invariant mass distribution and the cross section for this process at Next-to-Next-to-Leading-Logarithmic level, which are matched to the QCD Next-to-Leading Order results, and compare the differences of the resummation effects with different jet veto $p_{T}^{\rm veto}$ and jet radius $R$. Our results show that both resummation enhancement effects and the scale uncertainties decrease with the increasing of jet veto $p_{T}^{\rm veto}$ and jet radius $R$, respectively. When $p_{T}^{\rm veto}=25$ GeV and $R=0.4~(0.5)$, the resummation effects reduce the scale uncertainties of the Next-to-Leading Order jet vetoed cross sections to about $7\%~(6\%)$, which lead to increased confidence on the theoretical predictions. Besides, after including resummation effects, the PDF uncertainties of jet vetoed cross section are about $7\%$.

Figures (10)

• Figure 1: Comparisons of the leading singular and the exact NLO jet vetoed cross sections for $HW^{+}$ (left panel) and $HZ$ (right panel) production at the LHC with $\sqrt{S}=14$ TeV, respectively.
• Figure 2: The RG invariant hard function $\overline{H}(M,p_T^{\rm veto})$ for three different jet radius parameter $R$, where the bands reflect the scale uncertainties, and $M=300$ GeV.
• Figure 3: Dependence of the coefficient $d_2^{\rm veto}(R)$ on the jet radius parameter $R$, normalized to $d_2^q$.
• Figure 4: The NLL (green bands) and NNLL (red bands) resummed invariant mass distributions for $HW^{\pm}$ (left panel) and $HZ$ (right panel) associated production with $p_T^{\rm veto}=20$ GeV and $R=0.4$ at the LHC with $\sqrt{S}=14$ TeV, where the bands reflect the scale uncertainties.
• Figure 5: The NLL (green bands) and NNLL (red bands) resummed jet veto cross section for $HV$ associated production at the LHC with $\sqrt{S}=14$ TeV for three different jet radius parameter $R = 0.2, 0.4$ and $0.8$, where the bands reflect the scale uncertainties.