Photon-pair jet production via gluon fusion at the LHC

Abstract

Photon-pair direct or jet-associated productions are important for relevant standard model measurement, Higgs and new physics searches at the LHC. The loop-induced gluon-fusion process gg -> \gamma\gamma g, which although formally contributes only at the next-to-next-to-leading order to \gamma\gamma j productions, may get enhanced by the large gluon flux at the LHC. We have checked and confirmed previous results on gg -> \gamma\gamma, \gamma\gamma g at one loop, using now the traditional Feynman diagram based approach and taking into account the quark mass effects, and further updated them for the 7 and 14 TeV LHC with new inputs and settings. We provide the details and results of the calculations, which involves manipulation of rank-5 pentagon integrals. Our results show that the gluon-fusion process can contribute about 10% of the Born result, especially at small M_{\gamma\gamma} and PT_{\gamma\gamma}, and increase further the overall scale uncertainty. Top quark loop effects are examined in detail, which shows importance near or above the threshold M_{\gamma\gamma} \gsim 2m_t.