Electroweak and QCD corrections to Higgs production via vector-boson fusion at the CERN LHC

Abstract

The radiative corrections of the strong and electroweak interactions are calculated at next-to-leading order for Higgs-boson production in the weak-boson-fusion channel at hadron colliders. Specifically, the calculation includes all weak-boson fusion and quark-antiquark annihilation diagrams to Higgs-boson production in association with two hard jets, including all corresponding interferences. The results on the QCD corrections confirm that previously made approximations of neglecting $s$-channel diagrams and interferences are well suited for predictions of Higgs production with dedicated vector-boson fusion cuts at the LHC. The electroweak corrections, which also include real corrections from incoming photons and leading heavy Higgs-boson effects at two-loop order, are of the same size as the QCD corrections, viz. typically at the level of 5%--10% for a Higgs-boson mass up to $\ensuremath{\sim}700\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{GeV}$. In general, both types of corrections do not simply rescale differential distributions, but induce distortions at the level of 10%. The discussed corrections have been implemented in a flexible Monte Carlo event generator.