Higgs Radiation off Bottom Quarks at the Tevatron and the LHC

Abstract

Higgs-boson production in association with bottom quarks, ppbar/pp -> b bbar H + X, is one of the most important discovery channels for supersymmetric Higgs particles at the Tevatron and the LHC. We have calculated the next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the parton processes qqbar,gg -> bbbar H and present results for total cross sections and for distributions in the transverse momenta of the bottom quarks. The QCD corrections reduce the renormalization and factorization scale dependence and thus stabilize the theoretical predictions, especially when the Higgs boson is produced in association with high-pT bottom quarks. The next-to-leading order predictions for the total cross section are in reasonable numerical agreement with calculations based on bottom-quark fusion bbbar ->H.

Figures (6)

• Figure 1: A generic set of diagrams (a) for the Born level, (b) for virtual gluon exchange, (c) gluon radiation and (d) gluon-(anti)quark scattering in the subprocesses $q\bar{q}, gg\to b\bar{b}H$ etc.
• Figure 2: Variation of the LO and NLO cross sections with the renormalization and factorization scales for $p\bar{p} \to b\bar{b}H+X$ at the Tevatron.
• Figure 3: Variation of the LO and NLO cross sections with the renormalization and factorization scales for $pp \to b\bar{b}H+X$ at the LHC.
• Figure 4: Total cross section for $p\bar{p} \to b\bar{b}H+X$ at the Tevatron (upper figure) and $pp \to b\bar{b}H+X$ at the LHC (lower figure) as a function of the Higgs boson mass.
• Figure 5: Cross section for $p\bar{p} \to b\bar{b}H+X$ at the Tevatron with one or two high-$p_T$ bottom quarks as a function of the minimal $b$-quark transverse momentum.