Higgs boson production in association with massive bottom quarks at NNLO+PS

Abstract We study the production of a Higgs boson in association with a bottom-quark pair b b ¯ H $$ \left(b\overline{b}H\right) $$ at hadron colliders. Our calculation is performed in the four-flavour scheme with massive bottom quarks. This work presents the first computation of next-to-next-to-lea...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Christian Biello, Javier Mazzitelli, Aparna Sankar, Marius Wiesemann, Giulia Zanderighi
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: SpringerOpen 2025-04-01
Series:Journal of High Energy Physics
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Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP04(2025)088
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Summary:Abstract We study the production of a Higgs boson in association with a bottom-quark pair b b ¯ H $$ \left(b\overline{b}H\right) $$ at hadron colliders. Our calculation is performed in the four-flavour scheme with massive bottom quarks. This work presents the first computation of next-to-next-to-leading-order (NNLO) QCD corrections to this process, and we combine them with all-order radiative corrections from a parton shower simulation (NNLO+PS). The calculation is exact, except for the two-loop amplitude, which is evaluated in the small quark mass expansion, which is an excellent approximation for bottom quarks at LHC energies. For the NNLO+PS matching, we employ the MiNNLOPS method for heavy-quark plus colour-singlet production within the Powheg framework. We present an extensive phenomenological analysis both at the inclusive level and considering bottom jets using flavour-tagging algorithms. By comparing four-flavour and five-flavour scheme predictions at NNLO+PS, we find that the NNLO corrections in the four-flavour scheme resolve the long-standing tension between the two schemes. Finally, we show that our NNLO+PS predictions also have important implications on modelling the b b ¯ H $$ b\overline{b}H $$ background in Higgs-pair measurements.
ISSN:1029-8479