Finite top mass effects for hadronic Higgs production at next-to-next-to-leading order

The first four terms of an expansion in M-H(2)/M-t(2) of the total inclusive cross section for Higgs production in gluon fusion are evaluated through next-to-next-to-leading order QCD. A reliable and precise approximation of the full top mass dependence at NNLO is derived and compared to the frequently used heavy-top limit. It is found that both results agree numerically to better than 0.5% in the Higgs mass range of 100-300 GeV. This validates the higher order results for the inclusive Higgs cross section and justifies the heavy-top limit as a powerful tool for Higgs phenomenology at the LHC and the Tevatron.