Higgs Boson Production in Association with Bottom Quarks

TL;DR

The paper analyzes Higgs boson production in association with bottom quarks at the Tevatron and LHC, focusing on two- and one-bottom-jet final states and inclusive production. It compares four-flavor-number scheme (FFNS) and five-flavor-number scheme (VFNS) calculations at next-to-leading order (and NNLO for inclusive production), showing sizable NLO corrections and reduced scale uncertainties. The study demonstrates that FFNS and VFNS predictions are consistent within uncertainties, validating two complementary perturbative approaches for a channel especially relevant when bottom Yukawa couplings are enhanced (MSSM tanβ). The results provide robust cross-section predictions and uncertainty estimates that support Higgs searches in bottom-quark-rich final states.

Abstract

In the Standard Model, the coupling of the Higgs boson to b quarks is weak, leading to small cross sections for producing a Higgs boson in association with b quarks. However, Higgs bosons with enhanced couplings to b quarks, such as occur in supersymmetric models for large values of tan beta, will be copiously produced at both the Tevatron and the LHC in association with b quarks, which will be an important discovery channel. We investigate the connections between the production channels, bg -> bh and gg ->b bbar h, at next-to-leading order (NLO) in perturbative QCD and present results for the cases with two high p_T b jets and with one high p_T b jet at both the Tevatron the the LHC. Finally, the total cross sections without cuts are compared between gg -> b bbar h at NLO and b bbar ->h at NNLO.

Figures (8)

• Figure 1: Sample Feynman diagrams for $gg\rightarrow b {\overline b} h$ and $q {\overline q}\rightarrow b {\overline b} h$ production.
• Figure 2: Feynman diagram for $b {\overline b}\rightarrow h$ production.
• Figure 3:
• Figure 4: Total cross sections for $p{\overline p} (pp) \rightarrow b {\overline b} h+X$ at the Tevatron and the LHC as a function of the Higgs mass $M_h$ with two high-$p_T$$b$ jets identified in the final state. The $b/\bar{b}$ quarks are required to satisfy $p_T^{b/\bar{b}}>20~GeV$. We fix $\mu=\mu_R=\mu_F=(2m_b+M_h)/4$.
• Figure 5: Total cross sections for $p{\overline p} (pp) \rightarrow b {\overline b} h+X$ at the Tevatron and the LHC as a function of the cut $p_{T {\rm cut}}$ in $p_T^{b/\bar{b}}$ for a Higgs mass $M_h=120$ GeV with two high-$p_T$$b$ jets identified in the final state. We fix $\mu=\mu_R=\mu_F=(2m_b+M_h)/4$.