Exact Top-Quark Mass Dependence in Hadronic Higgs Production

Open Access

Exact Top-Quark Mass Dependence in Hadronic Higgs Production

M. Czakon, R. V. Harlander, J. Klappert, and M. Niggetiedt

Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 162002 – Published 12 October 2021; Erratum Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 179901 (2023)

Abstract

The impact of the finite top-quark mass on the inclusive Higgs production cross section at higher perturbative orders has been an open question for almost three decades. In this Letter, we report on the computation of this effect at next-to-next-to-leading order QCD. For the purely gluonic channel, it amounts to $+ 0.62 %$ relative to the result obtained in the Higgs effective field theory approximation. The formally subleading partonic channels overcompensate this shift, leading to an overall effect of $- 0.26 %$ at a $p p$ collider energy of 13 TeV, and $- 0.1 %$ at 8 TeV. This result eliminates one of the main theoretical uncertainties to inclusive Higgs production cross section at the LHC.

Received 18 May 2021
Accepted 2 September 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.162002

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP³.

Published by the American Physical Society