QCD Effects in Higgs Physics

TL;DR

This review provides a comprehensive, high-precision assessment of Higgs boson phenomenology at the LHC in both the SM and the MSSM. It systematizes decay widths and branching ratios with all relevant higher-order QCD and electroweak corrections, and presents state-of-the-art predictions for Higgs production mechanisms, including gluon fusion, vector-boson fusion, and associated production, with detailed treatment of heavy-quark and SUSY-loop effects. The MSSM section extends these results to the extended Higgs sector, incorporating radiative corrections, SUSY particle decays, and parameter-space dependencies, highlighting how production and decay patterns shift with tanβ and mass spectra. Overall, the paper provides benchmark cross sections and decay patterns essential for interpreting LHC data and for constraining or discovering MSSM Higgs bosons through multiple channels across a wide mass range.

Abstract

Higgs boson production at the LHC within the Standard Model and its minimal supersymmetric extension is reviewed. The predictions for decay rates and production cross sections are updated by choosing the present value of the top quark mass and recent parton density sets. Moreover, all relevant higher order corrections, some of which have been obtained only recently, are included in a consistent way.

Figures (57)

• Figure 1: (a) The upper limit on the light scalar Higgs pole mass in the MSSM as a function of the top quark mass for two values of $\hbox{tg$\beta$}=1.5,30$. The top quark mass has been chosen as $M_t=175$ GeV and the common squark mass as $M_S=1$ TeV. The full lines correspond to the maximal mixing case [$A_t=\sqrt{6} M_S$, $A_b=\mu=0$] and the dashed lines to vanishing mixing. The pole masses of the other Higgs bosons, $H,A,H^\pm$, are shown as a function of the pseudoscalar mass in (b--d) for two values of $\hbox{tg$\beta$}=1.5, 30$ and vanishing mixing.
• Figure 2: The coupling parameters of the neutral MSSM Higgs bosons as a function of the pseudoscalar mass $M_A$ for two values of $\hbox{tg$\beta$} =1.5,30$ and vanishing mixing. They are defined in Table \ref{['tb:hcoup']}.
• Figure 3: Typical diagrams contributing to $H\to Q\bar{Q}$ at lowest order and one-, two- and three-loop QCD.
• Figure 4: Interpolation between the full massive NLO expression (dashed line) for the $b\bar{b}$ decay width of the Standard Higgs boson and the renormalization group improved NNNLO result (dotted line). The interpolated curve is presented by the full line.
• Figure 5: Diagrams contributing to $H\to gg$ at lowest order.