Higgs boson production at hadron colliders: differential cross sections through next-to-next-to-leading order

TL;DR

A calculation of the fully differential cross section for Higgs-boson production in the gluon fusion channel through next-to-next- to-leading order (NNLO) in perturbative QCD is presented.

Abstract

We present a calculation of the fully differential cross section for Higgs boson production in the gluon fusion channel through next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative QCD. We apply the method introduced in \cite{Anastasiou:2003gr} to compute double real emission corrections. Our calculation permits arbitrary cuts on the final state in the reaction $hh \to H + X$. It can be easily extended to include decays of the Higgs boson into observable final states. In this Letter, we discuss the most important features of the calculation, and present some examples of physical applications that illustrate the range of observables that can be studied using our result. We compute the NNLO rapidity distribution of the Higgs boson, and also calculate the NNLO rapidity distribution with a veto on jet activity.

Figures (2)

• Figure 1: Bin-integrated rapidity distribution for LHC kinematics. The scale $\mu$ is varied between $m_h/2 \leq \mu \leq 2m_h$. The LO, NLO, and NNLO distributions are shown.
• Figure 2: Bin-integrated rapidity distribution for LHC kinematics, with a jet veto of $|p_{\perp}^{j}| < 40$ GeV. We have set $\mu=m_h$, and have included the LO, NLO, and NNLO results