Next-to-leading order QCD predictions for pair production of neutral Higgs bosons at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

We present the calculations of the complete NLO inclusive total cross sections for pair production of neutral Higgs bosons through $b\bar b$ annihilation in the minimal supersymmetric standard model at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. In our calculations, we used both the DREG scheme and the DRED scheme and found that the NLO total cross sections in the above two schemes are the same. Our results show that the $b\bar b$-annihilation contributions can exceed ones of $gg$ fusion and $q\bar q$ annihilation for $h^0H^0$, $A^0h^0$ and $A^0H^0$ productions when $\tan\beta$ is large. In the case of $\mu>0$, the NLO corrections enhance the LO total cross sections significantly, which can reach a few tens percent, while for $\mu<0$, the corrections are relatively small, and are negative in most parameter space. Moreover, the NLO QCD corrections can reduce the dependence of the total cross sections on the renormalization/factorization scale, especially for $\mu<0$. We also use the CTEQ6.1 PDF sets to estimate the uncertainty of LO and NLO total cross sections, and find that the uncertainty arising from the choice of PDFs increases with the increasing $m_{A^0}$.