Finite Quark Mass Effects in Hadronic Higgs Production
Marco Niggetiedt (University of Zurich)
Tuesday, 14 October 2025 at 10:45
Abstract
The discovery of the Higgs boson at the LHC has initiated an era of precision measurements of couplings and quantum numbers of the Higgs boson. At the LHC, gluon fusion is the dominant Higgs production process, with the coupling of the Higgs boson to gluons mediated by a massive quark. Enormous efforts have been devoted to the precise theoretical description of the total inclusive cross section for this production mode. One of the open questions has been the impact of finite top- and bottom-quark masses on this quantity.
In my talk, I will provide an overview of the theory uncertainties associated with the inclusive gluon fusion cross section, and discuss the challenges of the underlying calculation through NNLO QCD.