We evaluate the top-bottom interference contribution to the fully-inclusive Higgs production cross section at next-to-next-to-leading order in QCD. Although bottom-quark-mass effects are power-suppressed, the accuracy of state-of-the-art theory predictions makes an exact determination of this effect indispensable. The total effect of the interference at 13 TeV is −1.99(1)−0.15+0.30 pb, while the pure O(αs4) correction is 0.43 pb. With this result, we address one of the leading theory uncertainties of the cross section.
@article{arxiv.2312.09896,
title = {Top-Bottom Interference Contribution to Fully-Inclusive Higgs Production},
author = {Michał Czakon and Felix Eschment and Marco Niggetiedt and Rene Poncelet and Tom Schellenberger},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2312.09896},
year = {2024}
}