Electroweak and finite quark-mass effects on the Higgs boson transverse momentum distribution

Abstract

We perform a detailed study of the various one-loop contributions leading to production of the Standard Model Higgs boson in association with a hard jet. This production mode contributes to the current Tevatron exclusion limit of the Standard Model Higgs with 160 GeV < M_H < 170 GeV, and will also be important for discovery and interpretation of new scalar bosons at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). We include top- and bottom-quark initiated contributions, maintaining the exact dependence on the quark masses, and also study previously neglected W- and Z-boson mediated effects which shift the qg and q\bar{q} production modes. We consider the deviations from commonly used approximations for the Higgs boson transverse momentum spectrum caused by the finite top-quark mass, bottom quark contributions, and electroweak gauge boson terms. All three effects act to decrease the Higgs boson transverse momentum distribution for observable momenta, with shifts reaching -8% at the Tevatron and -30% at the LHC. The shifts have a significant dependence on the Higgs p_T, and are especially important if large momenta are selected by experimental cuts.