Next-to-next-to-leading-order subtraction formalism in hadron collisions and its application to Higgs-boson production at the large hadron collider.
We consider higher-order QCD corrections to the production of colorless high-mass systems (lepton pairs, vector bosons, Higgs bosons, etc.) in hadron collisions. We propose a new formulation of the subtraction method to numerically compute arbitrary infrared-safe observables for this class of processes. To cancel the infrared divergences, we exploit the universal behavior of the associated transverse-momentum (qT) distributions in the small-qT region. The method is illustrated in general terms up to the next-to-next-to-leading order in QCD perturbation theory. As a first explicit application, we study Higgs-boson production through gluon fusion. Our calculation is implemented in a parton level Monte Carlo program that includes the decay of the Higgs boson into two photons. We present selected numerical results at the CERN Large Hadron Collider.
INFN, Sezione di Firenze and Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Firenze, I-50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Florence, Italy.
Stefano
S
Catani
Massimiliano
M
Grazzini