HDECAY: a Program for Higgs Boson Decays in the Standard Model and its Supersymmetric Extension

We describe the Fortran code HDECAY which calculates the decay widths and the branching ratios of the Standard Model Higgs boson, and of the neutral and charged Higgs particles of the Minimal Supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model. The program is self-contained (with all subroutines included), easy to run, fast and calculates the decay widths and branching ratios according to the current theoretical knowledge.Comment: LaTeX, 26 pages, 3 ps figures include

The measurement of the Higgs self-coupling at the LHC: theoretical status

Now that the Higgs boson has been observed by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the LHC, the next important step would be to measure accurately its properties to establish the details of the electroweak symmetry breaking mechanism. Among the measurements which need to be performed, the determination of the Higgs self-coupling in processes where the Higgs boson is produced in pairs is of utmost importance. In this paper, we discuss the various processes which allow for the measurement of the trilinear Higgs coupling: double Higgs production in the gluon fusion, vector boson fusion, double Higgs-strahlung and associated production with a top quark pair. We first evaluate the production cross sections for these processes at the LHC with center-of-mass energies ranging from the present $\sqrt s=8$ TeV to $\sqrt s=100$ TeV, and discuss their sensitivity to the trilinear Higgs coupling. We include the various higher order QCD radiative corrections, at next-to-leading order for gluon and vector boson fusion and at next-to-next-to-leading order for associated double Higgs production with a gauge boson. The theoretical uncertainties on these cross sections are estimated. Finally, we discuss the various channels which could allow for the detection of the double Higgs production signal at the LHC and the accuracy on the self-coupling that could be ultimately achieved.Comment: 37 pages, 10 tables, 17 figures. Typos corrected, matches the journal versio

QCD Corrections to SUSY Higgs Production: The Role of Squark Loops

We calculate the two-loop QCD corrections to the production of the neutral supersymmetric Higgs bosons via the gluon fusion mechanism at hadron colliders, including the contributions of squark loops. To a good approximation, these additional contributions lead to the same QCD corrections as in the case where only top and bottom quark loops are taken into account. The QCD corrections are large and increase the Higgs production cross sections significantly.Comment: 5 pages, latex, 2 figure

Robotic Resistance Treadmill Training Improves Locomotor Function in Children With Cerebral Palsy: A Randomized Controlled Pilot Study

Objective To determine whether applying controlled resistance forces to the legs during the swing phase of gait may improve the efficacy of treadmill training as compared with applying controlled assistance forces in children with cerebral palsy (CP). Design Randomized controlled study. Setting Research unit of a rehabilitation hospital. Participants Children with spastic CP (N=23; mean age, 10.6y; range, 6–14y; Gross Motor Function Classification System levels, I–IV). Interventions Participants were randomly assigned to receive controlled assistance (n=11) or resistance (n=12) loads applied to the legs at the ankle. Participants underwent robotic treadmill training 3 times a week for 6 weeks (18 sessions). A controlled swing assistance/resistance load was applied to both legs starting from the toe-off to mid-swing phase of gait during training. Main Outcome Measures Outcome measures consisted of overground walking speed, 6-minute walk distance, and Gross Motor Function Measure scores and were assessed pre and post 6 weeks of training and 8 weeks after the end of training. Results After 6 weeks of treadmill training in participants from the resistance training group, fast walking speed and 6-minute walk distance significantly improved (18% and 30% increases, respectively), and 6-minute walk distance was still significantly greater than that at baseline (35% increase) 8 weeks after the end of training. In contrast, overground gait speed and 6-minute walk distance had no significant changes after robotic assistance training. Conclusions The results of the present study indicated that robotic resistance treadmill training is more effective than assistance training in improving locomotor function in children with CP

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

Determining tan(beta) in \tau\tau Fusion to SUSY Higgs Bosons at a Photon Collider

We investigate \tau\tau fusion to light h and heavy H and A Higgs bosons in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) at a photon collider as a promising channel for measuring large values of tan(beta). For standard design parameters of a photon collider an error \Delta tan(beta) \sim 1, uniformly for tan(beta) \gsim 10, may be expected, improving on complementary measurements at the LHC and e+e- linear colliders.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure

Analytic two-loop results for selfenergy- and vertex-type diagrams with one non-zero mass

For a large class of two-loop selfenergy- and vertex-type diagrams with only one non-zero mass ($M$) and the vertices also with only one non-zero external momentum squared ($q^2$) the first few expansion coefficients are calculated by the large mass expansion. This allows to `guess' the general structure of these coefficients and to verify them in terms of certain classes of `basis elements', which are essentially harmonic sums. Since for this case with only one non-zero mass the large mass expansion and the Taylor series in terms of $q^2$ are identical, this approach yields analytic expressions of the Taylor coefficients, from which the diagram can be easily evaluated numerically in a large domain of the complex $q^2-$plane by well known methods. It is also possible to sum the Taylor series and present the results in terms of polylogarithms.Comment: LaTeX, 27 pages + 3 ps figures, uses axodraw.sty, some references reviste

SM and MSSM Higgs Boson Production: Spectra at large transverse Momentum

Strategies for Higgs boson searches require the knowledge of the total production cross section and the transverse momentum spectrum. The large transverse momentum spectrum of the Higgs boson produced in gluon fusion can be quite different in the Standard Model and the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. In this paper we present a comparison of the Higgs transverse momentum spectrum obtained using the PYTHIA event generator and the HIGLU program as well as the program HQT, which includes NLO corrections and a soft gluon resummation for the region of small transverse momenta. While the shapes of the spectra are similar for the Standard Model, significant differences are observed in the spectra of Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model benchmark scenarios with large tan(beta).Comment: 8 pages, 13 figure