REVIEW
Fully differential Higgs boson production and the di-photon signal through next-to-next-to-leading order
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology · Submitted 14 Jan 2005 · 76 references
Pith's verdict: A real capability jump — first fully differential NNLO diphoton Higgs signal with realistic cuts, plus released code — but the external benchmarking is thinner than the paper's tone implies.
T0 · AI review
Why Pith says this
Highlight any text to comment on it.
Referee report
The paper
The paper claims
A fully differential QCD prediction for the Higgs diphoton signal, carried to next-to-next-to-leading order with every final-state particle's kinematics kept.
The reading
What carries the argument
The load-bearing device is a method for extracting infrared and collinear singularities from real-emission phase space without performing any analytic integration. The phase space is parameterized so that the integration region is the unit hypercube and the singular limits sit on its boundaries; two parameterizations are developed, an 'energy' one in which the invariants $s_{if}$ take a factorized form, and a 'rapidity' one in which $s_{34}$, $s_{ih}$, and two of the $s_{if}$ factorize. Entangled singularities of the form $1/(λ_1+λ_2)$ are separated by sector decomposition, which splits the region into ordered sectors and remaps each to the unit cube; line singularities along an edge, such as the $1/s_{13}$ case, are first reduced to entangled form by a nonlinear change of variables and a split of the $λ_2$ integration at the point where the two competing terms coincide. Once a singularity is factorized, the expansion $λ^{-1+ǫ} = δ(λ)/ǫ + ∑_n ǫ^n/n! [ln^n(λ)/λ]_+$ converts it into delta functions and plus distributions that act on the measurement function, so the $1/ǫ$ poles can be cancelled numerically and discarded, leaving a finite integrand that still knows the full final-state kinematics. The authors emphasize that this is what distinguishes the approach from dipole subtraction, which needs process-independent counterterms and analytic integrals.
Extended reading notes
Core claim
The central claim is that the fully differential cross section for Higgs production in gluon fusion, including the decay $H → γγ$, can be computed through NNLO in perturbative QCD with arbitrary cuts on the final state. The authors report that the NNLO corrections to the diphoton signal follow the pattern of the inclusive cross section, raising the NLO result by up to roughly 20 percent depending on scale and Higgs mass, and that the NNLO scale-dependence band is about a factor of two narrower than at NLO. For the standard photon cuts they find the cut cross section is 0.59 to 0.66 of the inclusive NNLO result, most of that reduction coming from the transverse-momentum and pseudorapidity cuts rather than from isolation, and they find that the ratio of the cut K-factor to the inclusive K-factor stays within about 5 percent of unity. They also present distributions — the average photon transverse momentum and the pseudorapidity separation between the two photons — showing that features present at leading order, such as the peak near $p_⊥ = m_h/2$ and the peak at $|η_{γ,1} - η_{γ,2}| = 0$, survive at NNLO.
Load-bearing premise
The whole QCD correction is computed in the limit of an infinitely heavy top quark, with the Higgs coupling to two gluons treated as point-like, and the finite-top-mass effects are restored only by multiplying by a ratio of leading-order cross sections, which is exact at leading order but only asserted to be accurate at NNLO.
Editorial extensions
If this is right
- Experimental collaborations gain an NNLO-accurate, cut-dependent prediction for the diphoton Higgs signal rather than an inclusive rate multiplied by an acceptance factor.
- The finding that the cut K-factor tracks the inclusive K-factor to within about 5 percent means existing NLO differential distributions can be rescaled to approximate NNLO with a quantifiable error.
- The scale choice $μ ≈ m_h/2$ is argued to be preferred, since the NNLO corrections are small there and the fixed-order result agrees with threshold resummation.
- The same machinery applies to any $2 → 1$ process with one massive final-state particle, since the singular denominator structures are universal and only the numerators are process-specific.
- Because full kinematics are retained, the calculation can in principle be turned into a partonic-level event generator or extended to other Higgs decay channels.
Reading between the lines
- The paper's own comparison of its jet-vetoed results with NLO $H+1$ jet calculations suggests a practical shortcut: NNLO inclusive results minus NLO $H+1$ jet results reproduces the vetoed cross section, which is a cheaper route for observables where the veto is the only complication.
- The observation that the NNLO correction is smallest near $μ = m_h/2$, together with the agreement with threshold resummation there, hints that the residual theoretical uncertainty quoted at $μ = m_h$ may be overestimated rather than underestimated.
- Since the method's main cost is expression size — roughly a hundred sectors for this process — the practical ceiling on extending it to $2 →$ more complicated final states is likely set by phase-space parameterization quality rather than by the singularity extraction itself.
Original abstract
We describe a calculation of the fully differential cross section for Higgs boson production in the gluon fusion channel through next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in perturbative QCD. The decay of the Higgs boson into two photons is included. Technical aspects of the computation are discussed in detail. The implementation of the calculation into a numerical code, called FEHiP, is described. The NNLO K-factors for completely realistic photon acceptances and isolation cuts, including those employed by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations, are computed. We study various distributions of the photons from Higgs decay through NNLO.
The compiled record
The paper's own sentences, arranged, kept beside the review and separate from it. Each label is drawn from a closed vocabulary; the number beside it is the probability the classifier gave that label. Numbers in the tables are the authors', checked by code. No sentence in this record was written by a model.
The abstract, sentence by sentence
We describe a calculation of the fully differential cross section for Higgs boson production in the gluon fusion channel through next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in perturbative QCD. The decay of the Higgs boson into two photons is included. Technical aspects of the computation are discussed in detail. The implementation of the calculation into a numerical code, called FEHiP, is described. The NNLO K-factors for completely realistic photon acceptances and isolation cuts, including those employed by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations, are computed. We study various distributions of the photons from Higgs decay through NNLO.
background contribution method result interpretation main claim
| # | sentence | role | the authors' own work | states the main conclusion | strength |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| s0 | We describe a calculation of the fully differential cross section for Higgs boson production in the gluon fusion channel through next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in perturbative QCD. | contribution 1.00 | 0.96 | 0.21 | asserted 0.99 |
| s1 | The decay of the Higgs boson into two photons is included. | contribution 0.77 | 0.61 | 0.04 | asserted 0.99 |
| s2 | Technical aspects of the computation are discussed in detail. | method 0.92 | 0.74 | 0.02 | asserted 0.94 |
| s3 | The implementation of the calculation into a numerical code, called FEHiP, is described. | method 0.86 | 0.93 | 0.03 | asserted 1.00 |
| s4 | The NNLO K-factors for completely realistic photon acceptances and isolation cuts, including those employed by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations, are computed. | result 0.83 | 0.95 | 0.20 | asserted 1.00 |
| s5 | We study various distributions of the photons from Higgs decay through NNLO. | contribution 0.97 | 0.94 | 0.09 | asserted 0.98 |
What was examined, and what was not
- arXiv listing abstract v2
- full text
- figures and tables
- references and citing sentences
- relations to other papers
- P abstract
- S sections
- T body sentences
- C citations
- R cross-paper relations
Figures
Showing 8 of the paper's 9 figures. See all figures in the PDF ↗ Figures reproduced from arXiv:hep-ph/0501130 by the authors.
References
How later papers used it
65 later papers cite it
4 later papers by other authors are listed below: 4 used its method or tool.
Uses its method or tool 4 of 17 papers with this label
-
Used FEHiP to translate a figure into NNLO bounds on the LHC Higgs production cross section.
Smoking Guns for On-Shell New Physics at the LHC (2008) · 0.83 · paraphrased: the licence does not allow quoting
-
Used the publicly available code FEHiP for the fixed-order rapidity distribution of the pseudo-scalar Higgs, applying the scalar Higgs result with a ratio factor.
Rapidity distribution of pseudo-scalar Higgs boson to $\rm{\textbf{NNLO}_A+\overline{\textbf {NNLL}}}$ (2023) · 0.99 · paraphrased: the licence does not allow quoting
-
While f.o results up to NNLO are obtained using publicly available code FEHIP [ref] , the resummed contributions are included up to NNLL using an in-house Fortran code.
Threshold resummation in rapidity for colorless particle production at LHC (2018) · Higgs rapidity distribution · 0.98
-
Used the publicly available code FEHIP to obtain its gluon rapidity distribution up to NNLO.
Threshold resummation of the rapidity distribution for Higgs production at NNLO+NNLL (2017) · 0.99 · paraphrased: the licence does not allow quoting
How the literature uses it
58 arXiv papers cite this in 96 sentences
Papers citing it · 45 sentences without a confident label
Uses its method or tool 12 papers
-
In this paper we compute accepted cross-sections and kinematic distributions at NNLO using the programs FEHIP [ref] and HNNLO [ref] .
Perturbative QCD effects and the search for a H->WW->l nu l nu signal at the Tevatron · Introduction · 0.95
-
Figure [ref] shows the EFT prediction of this ratio calculated at NLO in \(α_S\) using Fehip [ref] for a range of Higgs masses in the large-$m_t$ limit.
Smoking Guns for On-Shell New Physics at the LHC · Introduction · 0.90
-
In our analysis we obtain $σ^(τ^)$ and $σ^(τ^)$ numerically using the publicly available program [ref] , which allows one to obtain the fixed-order NNLO Higgs production cross section for generic phase-space cuts.
Higgs Production with a Central Jet Veto at NNLL+NNLO · Nonsingular Contributions · 1.00
Uses its data or values 3 papers
-
Here one finds [ref]
Theory Uncertainties for Higgs and Other Searches Using Jet Bins · Higgs + $0$ Jets · 0.95
-
For example, for $gg→H$ (with $√(s) =7$, $m_H = 165$, $μ_f = μ_r = m_H/2$), one finds [ref]
The SM and NLO Multileg and SM MC Working Groups: Summary Report · Structure of the Perturbative Series · 0.91
-
The signal cross-section is known with a scale uncertainty of about $±7%$ at NNLO [ref] .
QCD radiation effects on the H->WW->l nu l nu signal at the LHC · Introduction · 0.96
Compares with it 6 papers
-
We will show resummed results up to NNLL+NNLO order and also compare with the results obtained in fixed-order perturbation theory at NNLO using [ref] .
Higgs Production with a Central Jet Veto at NNLL+NNLO · Numerical Results · 0.97
-
We check that the results up to $O(α_s^4)$ of the previous section are reproduced (which turns out to happen in a rather nontrivial way), we construct an explicit analytic matched $O(α_s^3)$ expression in the finite $m_top$ case, and compare it to known numerical results [ref] .
Small x resummation of rapidity distributions: the case of Higgs production · Introduction · 0.99
-
In this paper, we restrict ourselves to the production of a scalar Higgs boson at the LHC and present the numerical impact of the resummed result over the fixed-order result known to NNLO level [ref] .
Threshold resummation of the rapidity distribution for Higgs production at NNLO+NNLL · Introduction · 0.88
Cites it as support 2 papers
-
The main reason is that, ultimately, the observable that is experimentally used is the cross section $σ^cuts_gg→H$ in which selection cuts have been applied and the theoretical prediction for $σ^cuts_gg→H$ is available only to NNLO [ref] .
Addendum to: Predictions for Higgs production at the Tevatron and the associated uncertainties · 1. The normalization of the $𝐠𝐠→𝐇$ cross section · 0.97
-
An example for this behavior can be found in the study of the jet-veto at NNLO [ref] .
NNLO QCD predictions for the H -> WW -> l l nu nu signal at the LHC · Introduction · 0.96
Cites it as background 25 papers
-
The rapidity spectrum for gluon-fusion Higgs production is known to * [ref] , while the * corrections are available in the threshold limit [ref] .
Resummation Improved Rapidity Spectrum for Gluon Fusion Higgs Production · Higgs rapidity spectrum · 0.93
-
Rapidity distribution has been known to NNLO for the Higgs production through gluon fusion [ref] , as well as in bottom quark annihilation [ref] .
Higgs boson rapidity distribution in bottom annihilation at NNLL and beyond · Introduction · 0.88
-
As NLO corrections to the core process $gg→h→τ^+τ^-$ are rather large, tremendous efforts have been made to perform fully differential calculations at NNLO [ref] and several predictions have been presented which merged such fixed-order results with resummation at next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy [ref] .
NLO matrix elements and truncated showers · Higgs boson production · 0.89
Discussion
Disagree with the review, or know something it missed? Leave a comment, highlight any passage above to comment on it, or challenge this review formally.