Inclusive Higgs boson production at the LHC in the kt-factorization approach

Abstract

We investigate the inclusive Higgs boson production in proton-proton collisions at the CERN LHC conditions using the $k_T$-factorization approach. Our analysis is based on the dominant off-shell gluon-gluon fusion subprocess (where the transverse momenta of initial gluons are taken into account) and covers $H \to \gamma \gamma$, $H \to ZZ^* \to 4l$ (where $l = e,\mu$) and $H \to W^+ W^- \to e^\pm \mu^\mp \nu \bar \nu$ decay channels. The transverse momentum dependent (or unintegrated) gluon densities in a proton were derived from Ciafaloni-Catani-Fiorani-Marchesini equation or, alternatively, were chosen in accordance with Kimber-Martin-Ryskin prescription. We estimate the theoretical uncertainties of our calculations and compare our results with next-to-next-to-leading-order plus next-to-next-to-leading-logarithmic ones obtained using collinear QCD factorization. Our predictions agree well with the latest experimental data taken by the CMS and ATLAS Collaborations at $\sqrt s = 8$ and $13$~TeV.