Higgs production with large transverse momentum in hadronic collisions at next-to-leading order

Abstract

Inclusive associated production of a light Higgs boson (m_H < m_t) with one jet in pp collisions is studied in next-to-leading order QCD. Transverse momentum (p_T < 30 GeV) and rapidity distributions of the Higgs boson are calculated for the LHC in the large top-quark mass limit. It is pointed out that, as much as in the case of inclusive Higgs production, the K-factor of this process is large (~1.6) and depends weakly on the kinematics in a wide range of transverse momentum and rapidity intervals. Our result confirms previous suggestions that the production channel p+p -> H+jet -> gamma+gamma+jet gives a measurable signal for Higgs production at the LHC in the mass range 100-140 GeV, crucial also for the ultimate test of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model.

Figures (3)

• Figure 1: Scale dependence of NLO and LO distributions using MRST parton densities. (a) $p_{\rm T}$ distributions at different scales and (b) the scale dependence of the integrated cross sections for $p_{\rm T}>30$ and $70$ GeV
• Figure 2: (a) $p_{\rm T}$ and (b) $y$ dependence of the $K$-factor and the ratio $R$ of the NLO cross sections for different sets of parton densities (see eqs. (\ref{['K']}) and (\ref{['R']})) .
• Figure 3: NLO-integrated cross section for the physics signal $p+p\rightarrow H + {\rm jet}\rightarrow \gamma+\gamma +$ jet for $p_{\rm T}> 30, 70$ GeV. We also include the value for the total cross section ($p+p\rightarrow H\rightarrow \gamma+\gamma$).