2016/05/31 by Sheng-Quan Wang, Xing-Gang Wu, Stanley J. Brodsky +1 · 12 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Boson #Higgs boson #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Large Hadron Collider #Mathematical physics #Order (exchange) #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Perturbative QCD #Physics #Physics beyond the Standard Model #Quantum chromodynamics #Renormalization #Sensitivity (control systems) #hep-ex #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.94.053003
published in Physical review. D/Physical review. D. 94(5) (American Physical Society) · 13 pages, 7 figures. We thank Michael Peskin for helpful discussions on how to characterize the uncertainty of PMC predictions. Revised version to be published in Phys.Rev.D
openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · arxiv created 2016/08/28 · openalex publication_date 2016/09/09 · arxiv updated 2016/09/13 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We present improved perturbative QCD (pQCD) predictions for Higgs boson hadroproduction at the LHC by applying the principle of maximum conformality (PMC), a procedure which resums the pQCD series using the renormalization group (RG), thereby eliminating the dependence of the predictions on the choice of the renormalization scheme while minimizing sensitivity to the initial choice of the renormalization scale. In previous pQCD predictions for Higgs boson hadroproduction, it has been conventional to assume that the renormalization scale \ensuremathμr of the QCD coupling \ensuremathαs(\ensuremathμr) is the Higgs mass and then to vary this choice over the range 1/2mH<\ensuremathμr<2mH in order to estimate the theory uncertainty. However, this error estimate is only sensitive to the nonconformal \ensuremathβ terms in the pQCD series, and thus it fails to correctly estimate the theory uncertainty in cases where a pQCD series has large higher-order contributions, as is the case for Higgs boson hadroproduction. Furthermore, this ad hoc choice of scale and range gives pQCD predictions which depend on the renormalization scheme being used, in contradiction to basic RG principles. In contrast, after applying the PMC, we obtain next-to-next-to-leading-order RG resummed pQCD predictions for Higgs boson hadroproduction which are renormalization-scheme independent and have minimal sensitivity to the choice of the initial renormalization scale. Taking mH=125 GeV, the PMC predictions for the pp\ensuremath→HX Higgs inclusive hadroproduction cross sections for various LHC center-of-mass energies are \ensuremathσIncl|7 TeV=21.21_\ensuremath-1.32+1.36 pb, \ensuremathσIncl|8 TeV=27.37_\ensuremath-1.59+1.65 pb, and \ensuremathσIncl|13 TeV=65.72_\ensuremath-3.01+3.46 pb. We also predict the fiducial cross section \ensuremathσfid(pp\ensuremath→H\ensuremath→\ensuremathγ\ensuremathγ): \ensuremathσfid|7 TeV=30.1_\ensuremath-2.2+2.3 fb, \ensuremathσfid|8 TeV=38.3_\ensuremath-2.8+2.9 fb, and \ensuremathσfid|13 TeV=85.8_\ensuremath-5.3+5.7 fb. The error limits in these predictions include the small residual high-order renormalization-scale dependence plus the uncertainty from the factorization scale. The PMC predictions show better agreement with the ATLAS measurements than the LHC Higgs Cross Section Working Group predictions which are based on conventional renormalization-scale setting.