English

Modelling $b\bar b H$ production for the LHC at 13.6 TeV

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2026-02-04 v2 High Energy Physics - Experiment

Abstract

We present new state-of-the-art predictions for Standard Model Higgs boson production in association with a bottom-quark pair (bbˉHb\bar bH). Updated cross sections are computed in accordance with the recommendations of the LHC Higgs Working Group, including the use of the PDF4LHC21 set of parton distribution functions, with a center-of-mass energy of 13.6 TeV. For the total inclusive cross section, we provide matched predictions of the massless five-flavour scheme and the massive four-flavour scheme at the fixed-order level. We further present recently obtained simulations matched to parton showers in both flavour schemes within the Standard Model, and also discuss them in the context of potential Beyond-the-Standard-Model scenarios. In the massless scheme, we compare different next-to-next-to-leading order predictions matched to parton showers obtained through the MiNNLOPS and GENEVA generators. In addition, the role of four-flavour scheme predictions is studied as a background to HHHH searches, considering both the top-quark and bottom-quark Yukawa contributions to bbˉHb\bar bH production. Finally, we analyse the sensitivity of the Higgs transverse momentum spectrum to light-quark Yukawa couplings in the diphoton decay channel based on MiNNLOPS simulations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2510.18815,
  title  = {Modelling $b\bar b H$ production for the LHC at 13.6 TeV},
  author = {Christian Biello and Alessandro Gavardi and Rebecca von Kuk and Matthew A. Lim and Stefano Manzoni and Elena Mazzeo and Javier Mazzitelli and Aparna Sankar and Michael Spira and Frank J. Tackmann and Marius Wiesemann and Giulia Zanderighi and Marco Zaro},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.18815},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Contribution to the Report 5 collection of the LHC Higgs Working Group. Also available at the CERN Document Server: https://cds.cern.ch/record/2942123 Version accepted by SciPost