Three-loop results for quark and gluon form factors

We study the photon-quark-quark and Higgs-gluon-gluon form factors for on-shell massless quarks and gluons in perturbative QCD. Previous third-order results for the quark case are extended by calculating the fermion-loop, contributions up to the finite terms in dimensional regularization. For the gluon case the complete set of infrared poles at three loops is derived. Using the exponentiation of the form factor, the latter results are employed to extract a function entering the infrared factorization of general third-order amplitudes. We evaluate the infrared finite absolute ratio of the time-like and space-like gluon form factors up to the fourth order in the strong coupling constant. The result supports previous indications that the perturbative expansion of the Higgs boson production rate at the LHC is under control. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.