Jet azimuthal angle correlations in the production of a Higgs boson pair plus two jets at hadron colliders

Azimuthal angle correlations of two jets in the process $pp\to HHjj$ are studied. The loop induced $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_s^4 \alpha_{}^2)$ gluon fusion (GF) sub-process and the $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_{}^4)$ weak boson fusion (WBF) sub-process are considered. The GF sub-process exhibits strong correlations in the azimuthal angles $\phi_{1,2}^{}$ of the two jets measured from the production plane of the Higgs boson pair and the difference between these two angles $\phi_1^{}-\phi_2^{}$, and a very small correlation in the sum of them $\phi_1^{}+\phi_2^{}$. The impact of using a finite top mass $m_t^{}$ value on the correlations is found crucial. The transverse momentum of the Higgs boson can be used to enhance or suppress the correlations. The impact of a non-standard value for the triple Higgs self-coupling on the correlations is found much smaller than that on other observables, such as the invariant mass of the two Higgs bosons. The peak shifts of the azimuthal angle distributions reflect the magnitude of parity violation in the $gg\to HH$ amplitude and the dependence of the distributions on parity violating phases is analytically clarified. The WBF sub-process also produces correlated distributions and it is found that they are not induced by the quantum effect of the intermediate weak bosons but mainly by a kinematic effect. This kinematic effect is a characteristic feature of the WBF sub-process and is not observed in the GF sub-process. It is found that the correlations are different in the GF and in the WBF sub-processes. As part of the process dependent information, they will be helpful in the analyses of both the GF sub-process and the WBF sub-process at the LHC.Comment: 35 pages, 12 figures, 3 table

Fiducial polarization observables in hadronic WZ production: A next-to-leading order QCD+EW study

We present a study at next-to-leading-order (NLO) of the process $pp \to W^\pm Z \to \ell \nu_l \ell'^+ \ell'^-$, where $\ell,\ell' =e, \mu$, at the Large Hadron Collider. We include the full NLO QCD corrections and the NLO electroweak (EW) corrections in the double-pole approximation. We define eight fiducial polarization coefficients directly constructed from the polar-azimuthal angular distribution of the decay leptons. These coefficients depend strongly on the kinematical cuts on the transverse momentum or rapidity of the individual leptons. Similarly, fiducial polarization fractions are also defined and they can be directly related to the fiducial coefficients. We perform a detailed analysis of the NLO QCD+EW fiducial polarization observables including theoretical uncertainties stemming from the scale variation and parton distribution function uncertainties, using the fiducial phase space defined by the ATLAS and CMS experiments. We provide results in the helicity coordinate system and in the Collins-Soper coordinate system, at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The EW corrections are found to be important in two of the angular coefficients related to the $Z$ boson, irrespective of the kinematical cuts or the coordinate system. Meanwhile, those EW corrections are very small for the $W^\pm$ bosons.Comment: Substantial improvement after useful comments from the anonymous referee: Numerical results for the EW corrections to the cross sections and distributions shifted by -5 (-2)% for ATLAS (CMS) cuts after fixing a bug in the momentum assignment in some cut and histogram routines; results for polarization observables marginally affected, hence conclusions for them unchanged; published versio

Polarisation at NLO in WZ production at the LHC

The pair production of a $W$ and a $Z$ boson at the LHC is an important process to study the triple-gauge boson couplings as well as to probe new physics that could arise in the gauge sector. In particular the leptonic channel $p p \to W^\pm Z\to 3\ell +\nu + X$ is considered by ATLAS and CMS collaborations. Polarisation observables can help pinning down new physics and give information on the spin of the gauge bosons. Measuring them requires high statistics as well as precise theoretical predictions. We define in this contribution fiducial polarisation observables for the $W$ and $Z$ bosons and we present theoretical predictions in the Standard Model at next-to-leading order (NLO) including QCD as well as NLO electroweak corrections, the latter in the double-pole approximation. We also show that this approximation works remarkably well for $W^\pm Z$ production at the LHC by comparing to the full results.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, 2 tables. Contribution to the proceedings of the 54th Rencontres de Moriond, EW interactions and unified theory, March 16-23 2019, La Thuile, Ital

Prospects for Higgs physics at energies up to 100 TeV

We summarise the prospects for Higgs boson physics at future proton-proton colliders with centre of mass (c.m.) energies up to 100 TeV. We first provide the production cross sections for the Higgs boson of the Standard Model from 13 TeV to 100 TeV, in the main production mechanisms and in subleading but important ones such as double Higgs production, triple production and associated production with two gauge bosons or with a single top quark. We then discuss the production of Higgs particles in beyond the Standard Model scenarios, starting with the one in the continuum of a pair of scalar, fermionic and vector dark matter particles in Higgs-portal models in various channels with virtual Higgs exchange. The cross sections for the production of the heavier CP-even and CP-odd neutral Higgs states and the charged Higgs states in two-Higgs doublet models, with a specific study of the case of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, are then given. The sensitivity of a 100 TeV proton machine to probe the new Higgs states is discussed and compared to that of the LHC with a c.m. energy of 14 TeV and at high luminosity.Comment: 61 pages, 16 figures, 6 tables; review article. v2: numbers and figures updated, aknowledgments modified, references added and typos corrected. Matches the published versio

The apparent excess in the Higgs to di-photon rate at the LHC: New Physics or QCD uncertainties?

The Higgs boson with a mass $M_H \approx 126$ GeV has been observed by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the LHC and a total significance of about five standard deviations has been reported by both collaborations when the channels $H\to \gamma \gamma$ and $H\to ZZ \to 4\ell$ are combined. Nevertheless, while the rates in the later search channel appear to be in accord with those predicted in the Standard Model, there seems to be an excess of data in the case of the $H\to \gamma\gamma$ discovery channel. Before invoking new physics contributions to explain this excess in the di--photon Higgs rate, one should verify that standard QCD effects cannot account for it. We describe how the theoretical uncertainties in the Higgs boson cross section for the main production process at the LHC, $gg \to H$, which are known to be large, should be incorporated in practice. We further show that the discrepancy between the theoretical prediction and the measured value of the $gg \to H \to \gamma \gamma$ rate, reduces to about one standard deviation when the QCD uncertainties are taken into account.Comment: LaTeX, 2 figures, 9 pages. Final version published in Physics Letters B with minor typos correcte