On the NLO QCD corrections to the production of the heaviest neutral Higgs scalar in the MSSM

We present a calculation of the two-loop top-stop-gluino contributions to Higgs production via gluon fusion in the MSSM. By means of an asymptotic expansion in the heavy particle masses, we obtain explicit and compact analytic formulae that are valid when the Higgs and the top quark are lighter than stops and gluino, without assuming a specific hierarchy between the Higgs mass and the top mass. Being applicable to the heaviest Higgs scalar in a significant region of the MSSM parameter space, our results complement earlier ones obtained with a Taylor expansion in the Higgs mass, and can be easily implemented in computer codes to provide an efficient and accurate determination of the Higgs production cross section.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figure

Higgs production in gluon fusion at next-to-next-to-leading order QCD for finite top mass

The inclusive Higgs production cross section from gluon fusion is calculated through NNLO QCD, including its top quark mass dependence. This is achieved through a matching of the 1/mtop expansion of the partonic cross sections to the exact large s-hat limits which are derived from k_T-factorization. The accuracy of this procedure is estimated to be better than 1% for the hadronic cross section. The final result is shown to be within 1% of the commonly used effective theory approach, thus confirming earlier findings.Comment: 28 pages, 14 figure

Finite top quark mass effects in NNLO Higgs boson production at LHC

We present next-to-next-to-leading order corrections to the inclusive production of the Higgs bosons at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) including finite top quark mass effects. Expanding our analytic results for the partonic cross section around the soft limit we find agreement with a very recent publication by Harlander and Ozeren \cite{Harlander:2009mq}.Comment: 15 page

Effects of SUSY-QCD in hadronic Higgs production at next-to-next-to-leading order

An estimate of the NNLO supersymmetric QCD effects for Higgs production at hadron colliders is given. Assuming an effective gluon-Higgs interaction, these corrections enter only in terms of process-independent, factorizable terms. We argue that the current knowledge of these terms up to NLO is sufficient to derive the NNLO hadronic cross section within the limitations of the standard theoretical uncertainties arising mainly from renormalization and factorization scale variations. The SUSY contributions are small with respect to the QCD effects, which means that the NNLO corrections to Higgs production are very similar in the Standard Model and the MSSM.Comment: LaTeX, 5 pages, 3 embedded PostScript figure

Towards Higgs boson production in gluon fusion to NNLO in the MSSM

We consider the Higgs boson production in the gluon-fusion channel to next-to-next-to-leading order within the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. In particular, we present analytical results for the matching coefficient of the effective theory and study its influence on the total production cross section in the limit where the masses of all MSSM particles coincide. For supersymmetric masses below 500 GeV it is possible to find parameters leading to a significant enhancement of the Standard Model cross section, the $K$-factors, however, change only marginally.Comment: 20 pages; v2: modification of discussion of numerical effect, version to appear in EPJC; v3: eq.(18) corrected, minor correction

Production of scalar and pseudo-scalar Higgs bosons to next-to-next-to-leading order at hadron colliders

We consider the production of intermediate-mass CP-even and CP-odd Higgs bosons in proton-proton and proton-anti-proton collisions. We extend the recently published results for the complete next-to-next-to-leading order calculation for a scalar Higgs boson to the pseudo-scalar case and present details of the calculation that might be useful for similar future investigations. The result is based on an expansion in the limit of a heavy top quark mass and a subsequent matching to the expression obtained in the limit of infinite energy. For a Higgs boson mass of 120 GeV the deviation from the infinite-top quark mass result is small. For 300 GeV, however, the next-to-next-to-leading order corrections for a scalar Higgs boson exceed the effective-theory result by about 9% which increases to 22% in the pseudo-scalar case. Thus in this mass range the effect on the total cross section amounts to about 2% and 6%, respectively, which may be relevant in future precision studies.Comment: 29 page

Next-to-Next-to-Leading Order Higgs Production at Hadron Colliders

The Higgs boson production cross section at pp and p\bar{p} colliders is calculated in QCD at next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO). We find that the perturbative expansion of the production cross section is well behaved and that scale dependence is reduced relative to the NLO result. These findings give us confidence in the reliability of the prediction. We also report an error in the NNLO correction to Drell-Yan production.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, minor change

Heavy-quark mass effects in Higgs boson production at the LHC

We study the impact of heavy-quark masses in Higgs boson production through gluon fusion at the LHC. We extend previous computations of the fully differential cross section and of the transverse momentum spectrum of the Higgs boson by taking into account the finite top- and bottom-quark masses up to O(alpha_S^3). We also discuss the issues arising when the heavy-quark mass is much smaller than the Higgs mass. Our results are implemented in updated versions of the HNNLO and HRes numerical programs.Comment: Minor modifications, results unchanged. Discussion on uncertainties added. Version published on JHE

Quark masses in Higgs production with a jet veto

We study the impact of finite mass effects due to top and bottom loops in the jet-veto distribution for Higgs production. We discuss the appearance of non-factorizing logarithms in the region p t,veto ≳ m b . We study their numerical impact and argue that these terms can be treated as a finite remainder. We therefore detail our prescription for resumming the jet-vetoed cross section and for assessing its uncertainty in the presence of finite mass effects. Resummation for the jet-veto, including mass effects, has been implemented in the public code JetVHeto

NLO QCD bottom corrections to Higgs boson production in the MSSM

We present a calculation of the two-loop bottom-sbottom-gluino contributions to Higgs boson production via gluon fusion in the MSSM. The calculation is based on an asymptotic expansion in the masses of the supersymmetric particles, which are assumed to be much heavier than the bottom quark and the Higgs bosons. We obtain explicit analytic results that allow for a straightforward identification of the dominant contributions in the NLO bottom corrections. We emphasize the interplay between the calculations of the masses and the production cross sections of the Higgs bosons, discussing sensible choices of renormalization scheme for the parameters in the bottom/sbottom sector.Comment: 25 pages, 4 figures. v2: references and two figures added, version published in JHE