Top-mass effects in differential Higgs production through gluon fusion at $ O\left( {\alpha_s^4} \right) $

Abstract

A bstract Effects from a finite top quark mass on differential distributions in the Higgs + jet production cross section through gluon fusion are studied at next-to-leading order in the strong coupling, i.e. $ O\left( {\alpha_s^4} \right) $ . Terms formally subleading in 1 /m t are calculated, and their influence on the transverse momentum and rapidity distribution of the Higgs boson are evaluated. We find that, for the differential K-factor, the heavy-top limit is valid at the 2-3% level as long as the transverse momentum of the Higgs remains below about 150 GeV.