NNLO QCD results for diphoton production at the LHC and the Tevatron

Abstract

We consider direct diphoton production in hadron collisions. We compute the next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) QCD radiative corrections at the fully-differential level. Our calculation is based on the q_T subtraction formalism and it is implemented in a parton level Monte Carlo program, which allows the user to apply arbitrary kinematical cuts on the final-state photons and the associated jet activity, and to compute the corresponding distributions in the form of bin histograms. We present selected numerical results related to Higgs boson searches and diphoton studies performed at the LHC and the Tevatron, and we show how the NNLO corrections to diphoton production are relevant to understand the main background of the decay channel (H -> gamma gamma) of the Higgs boson H.