Fully Differential Higgs Boson Production to Third Order in QCD

We present the first fully differential predictions for the production cross section of a Higgs boson via the gluon fusion mechanism at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order ((NLO)-L-3) in QCD perturbation theory. Differential distributions are shown for the two-photon final state produced by the decay of the Higgs boson for a realistic set of fiducial cuts. The (NLO)-L-3 corrections exhibit complex features and are in part larger than the inclusive (NLO)-L-3 corrections to the production cross section. Overall, we observe that the inclusion of the (NLO)-L-3 QCD corrections significantly reduces the perturbative uncertainties and leads to a stabilization of the perturbative expansion.

Automated summary

This study presents the first fully differential predictions for the production cross section of a Higgs boson via the gluon fusion mechanism at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order ((NLO)-L-3) in QCD perturbation theory. The (NLO)-L-3 corrections exhibit complex features and significantly reduce perturbative uncertainties for the production cross section.