NNLO QCD corrections to weak boson fusion Higgs boson production in the H → b$$ \overline{b} $$ and H → WW* → 4l decay channels

Abstract

We compute the next-to-next-to-leading order QCD corrections to Higgs boson production in weak boson fusion followed by its decay to a b$$ \overline{b} $$ b ¯ pair or to a pair of leptonically-decaying W bosons. Our calculation allows us to compute realistic fiducial cross sections and assess the impact of fiducial cuts applied to the Higgs boson decay products on the magnitude of QCD radiative corrections in weak boson fusion.

PanScales parton showers for hadron collisions: formulation and fixed-order studies

“…They were computed for the first time in Ref. [65] for Higgs production in VBF, using the eikonal approximation, and found to be typically ten times smaller than the NNLO factorisable corrections [70][71][72], as confirmed by the phenomenological study of Ref. [66], which also addresses double Higgs production.…”

Anomalous Higgs boson couplings in weak boson fusion production at NNLO in QCD

“…At the inclusive level, N 3 LO QCD corrections are known in the so-called factorized approximation [9]. At the differential level, factorized NNLO QCD corrections [10][11][12] as well as NLO EW corrections [13][14][15] are available. The dominant nonfactorizable corrections have been studied in Refs [16][17][18][19].…”

“…In this paper we extend these results by computing NNLO QCD corrections to weak boson fusion in the factorized approximation in the presence of anomalous HV V couplings. Although the HV V vertex is not affected by QCD effects, such a computation is non-trivial since obtaining fully-differential predictions for the WBF process with NNLO QCD accuracy [10][11][12] is quite demanding. The reason behind this is the relative smallness of radiative corrections and a very large phase space (typical for a 2 → 5 process) whose efficient generation is challenging.…”

“…In this paper, we employ the calculation of NNLO QCD corrections reported in Ref. [12]. It is performed using the nested soft-collinear subtraction scheme [23] which was adapted to WBF kinematics in Ref.…”

“…[24]. It provides a sufficiently efficient implementation and phasespace sampling that allowed us to incorporate decays of the Higgs boson [12] into the calculation. This efficiency is quite important for studying the anomalous couplings, especially for performing scans in the parameter space.…”