2025/08/19 by Elliot Fox, Fox, Elliot, A. Gehrmann–De Ridder +9 · 4 citations
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Computational Physics and Python Applications #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #Particle Detector Development and Performance #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2508.14282
openalex publication_date 2025/08/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We present NNLO QCD predictions for a wide range of event-shape observables in hadronic Higgs decays, taking into account the two dominant decay modes H→ gg and H→ bb. Specifically, we consider the six classical event shapes thrust, heavy jet mass, C-parameter, total and wide jet broadening, and the three-jet resolution y23 in the Durham algorithm. We also present results for the soft-drop variant of thrust. Decays of the Higgs boson to two gluons are treated in the heavy-top limit, whereas decays to a bottom-quark pair are mediated by a non-vanishing Yukawa coupling, despite considering kinematically massless quarks. Our results highlight the importance of NNLO QCD corrections in the calculation of event-shape observables and provide means to quantify the intrinsic difference between the two Higgs decay modes.