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

NLO corrections to differential cross sections for pseudo-scalar Higgs boson production

We have computed the full next-to-leading (NLO) QCD corrections to the differential distributions $d^2\sigma/(dp_T~dy)$ for pseudo-scalar Higgs (A) production at large hadron colliders. This calculation has been carried out using the effective Lagrangian approach which is valid as long as the mass of the pseudo-scalar Higgs boson $m_{\rm A}$ and its transverse momentum $p_T$ do not exceed the top-quark mass $m_t$. The shape of the distributions hardly differ from those obtained for scalar Higgs (H) production because, apart from the overall coupling constant and mass, there are only small differences between the partonic differential distributions for scalar and pseudo-scalar production. Therefore there are only differences in the magnitudes of the hadronic differential distributions which can be mainly attributed to the unknown mixing angle $\beta$ describing the pseudo-scalar Higgs coupling to the top quarks.Comment: 9 pages, LaTeX, 3 Postscript figures In the previous version we have forgotten to include contributions which arrise from interferences between graphs containing vertices corresponding to the operator $O_2(x)$ in Eq. (3) with graphs originating from the operator $O_1(x)$. These interferences occur because of the prescription for the Levi-Civita tensor given in our paper. These extra contributions are added to Eqs. (19) and (20). Numerically they are completely negligible so that the figures are not altere

Polarization in Top Quark Production and Decay near Threshold

Theoretical results are presented for top quarks produced in annihilation of polarized electrons on positrons. Polarization studies for $t\bar t$ pairs near threshold are free from hadronization ambiguities. This is due to the short lifetime of the top quark. Semileptonic decays are discussed as well as their applications in studying polarization dependent processes involving top quarks. The Green function formalism is applied to $t\bar t$ production at future $e^+e^-$ colliders with polarized beams. Lippmann--Schwinger equation is solved numerically for the QCD chromostatic potential given by the two-loop formula at large momentum transfers and Richardson ansatz at intermediate and small ones. The polarization dependent momentum distributions of top quarks and their decay products are calculated.Comment: 6 pages, LaTex (uses epsf.sty, 2 figures appended as uuencoded ps files). The complete paper, including figures, is also available via anonymous ftp at ttpux2.physik.uni-karlsruhe.de (129.13.102.139) as /ttp94-24/ttp94-24.ps, or via www at http://ttpux2.physik.uni-karlsruhe.de/preprints.html

Exploiting the WH/ZH symmetry in the search for New Physics

We suggest to isolate the loop-induced gluon-initiated component ($gg\to ZH$) for associated $ZH$ production by using the similarity of the Drell-Yan-like component for $ZH$ production to the $WH$ process. We argue that the cross-section ratio of the latter two processes can be predicted with high theoretical accuracy. Comparing it to the experimental $ZH/WH$ cross-section ratio should allow to probe for New Physics in the $gg\to ZH$ component at the HL-LHC. We consider typical BSM scenarios in order to exemplify the effect they would have on the proposed observable.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figures. v2: Minor changes; matches published versio