Top-Bottom Interference Contribution to Fully Inclusive Higgs Production

Abstract

We evaluate the top-bottom interference contribution to the fully inclusive Higgs production cross section at next-to-next-to-leading order in QCD. Although bottom-quark-mass effects are power suppressed, the accuracy of state-of-the-art theory predictions makes an exact determination of this effect indispensable. The total effect of the interference at 13 TeV is −1.99(1)−0.15+0.30  pb, while the pure O(αs4) correction is 0.43 pb. With this result, we address one of the leading theory uncertainties of the cross section. Published by the American Physical Society 2024