Higgs production in bottom-quark fusion in a matched scheme

Abstract

We compute the total cross-section for Higgs boson production in bottom-quark fusion using the so-called FONLL method for the matching of a scheme in which the $b$-quark is treated as a massless parton to that in which it is treated as a massive final-state particle. We discuss the general framework for the application of the FONLL method to this process, and then we present explicit expressions for the case in which the next-to-next-to-leading-log five-flavor scheme result is combined with the leading-order $\mathcal{O}(\hat{\mathcal{I}}{\pm }_s^2)$ four-flavor scheme computation. We compare our results in this case to the four-and five-flavor scheme computations, and to the so-called Santander matching.

15 pages, 4 figures; three typos corrected. Final version, to be published in Phys. Lett. B