Bottom-quark effects in Higgs production at intermediate transverse momentum

Abstract

We provide a precise description of the Higgs boson transverse momentum distribution including top and bottom quark contributions, that is valid for transverse momenta in the range mb ≲ p⊥ ≲ mt, where mb and mt are the bottom and top quark masses. This description is based on a combination of fixed next-to-leading order (NLO) results with next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic (NNLL) transverse momentum resummation. We show that ambiguities in the resummation procedure for the b-quark loops are of the same order as the related fixed-order uncertainties. We conclude that the current uncertainty in the top-bottom interference contribution to the Higgs transverse momentum spectrum is O(20 %).