Higgs production in hadron collisions: Soft and virtual QCD corrections at NNLO

Abstract

We consider QCD corrections to Higgs boson production through gluon-gluon fusion in hadron collisions. Using the recently evaluated [14] two-loop amplitude for this process and the corresponding factorization formulae [15]-[18] describing soft-gluon bremsstrahlung at O(αS2), we compute the soft and virtual contributions to the next-to-next-to-leading order cross section. We also discuss soft-gluon resummation at next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy. Numerical results for Higgs boson production at the LHC are presented.