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

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

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

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

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

Supersymmetric next-to-next-to-leading order corrections to Higgs boson production in gluon fusion

We compute the total cross section for the production of a light CP even Higgs boson within the framework of supersymmetric QCD up to next-to-next-to-leading order. Technical subtleties in connection to the evaluation of three-loop Feynman integrals with many mass scales are discussed in detail and explicit results for the counterterms of the evanescent couplings are provided. The new results are applied to several phenomenological scenarios which are in accordance with the recent discovery at the LHC. In a large part of the still allowed parameter space the $K$ factor of the supersymmetric theory is close to the one of the Standard Model. However, for the case where one of the top squarks is light, a deviation of more than 5% in the next-to-next-to-leading order prediction of the cross section can be observed where at the same time the predicted Higgs boson mass has a value of about 125 GeV.Comment: 37 page

NLO QCD corrections to pseudoscalar Higgs production in the MSSM

We present a calculation of the two-loop quark-squark-gluino contributions to pseudoscalar Higgs boson production via gluon fusion in the MSSM. We regularize the loop integrals using the Pauli-Villars method, and obtain explicit and compact analytic results based on an expansion in the heavy particle masses. Our results - valid when the pseudoscalar Higgs boson is lighter than squarks and gluinos - can be easily implemented in computer codes for an efficient and accurate determination of the pseudoscalar production cross section.Comment: 26 pages, 4 figures. v2: comments added in section 3, version published in JHE

NNLO phase space master integrals for two-to-one inclusive cross sections in dimensional regularization

We evaluate all phase space master integrals which are required for the total cross section of generic 2 -> 1 processes at NNLO as a series expansion in the dimensional regulator epsilon. Away from the limit of threshold production, our expansion includes one order higher than what has been available in the literature. At threshold, we provide expressions which are valid to all orders in terms of Gamma functions and hypergeometric functions. These results are a necessary ingredient for the renormalization and mass factorization of singularities in 2 -> 1 inclusive cross sections at NNNLO in QCD.Comment: 37 pages, plus 3 ancillary files containing analytic expressions in Maple forma

Top-mass effects in differential Higgs production through gluon fusion at order \alpha_s^4

Effects from a finite top quark mass on differential distributions in the Higgs+jet production cross section through gluon fusion are studied at next-to-leading order in the strong coupling, i.e. $O(\alpha_s^4)$. Terms formally subleading in $1/m_t$ are calculated, and their influence on the transverse momentum and rapidity distribution of the Higgs boson are evaluated. We find that, for the differential K-factor, the heavy-top limit is valid at the 2-3% level as long as the transverse momentum of the Higgs remains below about 150 GeV.Comment: 21 pages, 12 figure