Asking for an extra photon in Higgs production at the LHC and beyond

Abstract

We study the inclusive production of a Higgs boson in association with a high-$p_T$ photon at the LHC, detailing the leading-order features of the main processes contributing to the $H\gamma$ final state. Requiring an extra hard photon in Higgs production upsets the cross-section hierarchy for the dominant channels. The $H\gamma$ inclusive production comes mainly from photons radiated in vector-boson fusion (VBF), which accounts for about 2/3 of the total rate, for $p_T^{\gamma ,j}>30$ GeV, at leading order. On the other hand, radiating a high-$p_T$ photon in the main top-loop Higgs channel implies an extra parton in the final state, which suppresses the production rate by a further ${\alpha }_S$ power. As a result, the $H\gamma$ production via top loops at the LHC has rates comparable with the ones arising from either the $Ht\bar{t}$ production or the $HW(Z)\gamma$ associated production. Then, in order of decreasing cross section, comes the single-top-plus-Higgs channel, followed in turn by the heavy-flavor fusion processes $b\bar{b}\to H\gamma$ and $c\bar{c}\to H\gamma$. The $H\gamma$ production via electroweak loops has just a minor role. At larger c.m. energies, the $Ht\bar{t}\gamma$ channel surpasses the total contribution of top-loop processes. In particular, requiring $p_T^{\gamma ,j}>30$ GeV at $\sqrt{S}\simeq 100$ TeV, $Ht\bar{t}\gamma$ accounts for about $1/4$ of the inclusive $H\gamma$ production at leading order, about half of the total being due to VBF production.

20 pages, 13 figures, two comments added; one typo corrected; version published in JHEP

References in corpus (9)

• Observation of a new particle in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC
• Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC
• Reducing full one-loop amplitudes to scalar integrals at the integrand level
• OneLOop: for the evaluation of one-loop scalar functions
• On the Rational Terms of the one-loop amplitudes
• Search for new phenomena in events with at least three photons collected in $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector
• Higgs Boson Production in Association with a Photon in Vector Boson Fusion at the LHC
• Gluon Fusion Contribution to $VHj$ Production at Hadron Colliders
• $HZ\gamma$ production at $14\mathrm{TeV}$ LHC in next-to-leading order QCD

Cited by in corpus (13)

• Collider Physics at the Precision Frontier
• Search for Higgs bosons produced via vector-boson fusion and decaying into bottom quark pairs in $\sqrt{s}=13$ $\mathrm{TeV}$ $pp$ collisions with the ATLAS detector
• A universally enhanced light-quarks Yukawa couplings paradigm
• Observation of electroweak production of two jets in association with an isolated photon and missing transverse momentum, and search for a Higgs boson decaying into invisible particles at 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector
• More light on Higgs flavor at the LHC: Higgs couplings to light quarks through $h+\gamma$ production
• Search for Higgs boson production in association with a high-energy photon via vector-boson fusion with decay into bottom quark pairs at $\sqrt{s}$=13 TeV with the ATLAS detector
• Probing the Interactions of Axion-Like Particles with Electroweak Bosons and the Higgs Boson in the High Energy Regime at LHC
• Observation of WW$\gamma$ production and search for H$\gamma$ production in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV
• Production of $HHH$ and $HHV(V=\gamma ,Z)$ at the hadron colliders
• Higgs to charm quarks in vector boson fusion plus a photon
• Exploring Higgs-Photon Production at the LHC
• Di-vector boson production in association with a Higgs boson at hadron colliders
• Illuminating all-hadronic final states with a photon: Exotic decays of the Higgs boson to four bottom quarks in vector boson fusion plus gamma at hadron colliders