On the impact of non-factorisable corrections in VBF single and double Higgs production
Abstract
We study the factorisable and non-factorisable QCD corrections to Vector-Boson Fusion single and double Higgs production and show the combined corrections for both processes at O(αs2). We investigate the validity of the eikonal approximation with and without selection cuts, and carry out an in-depth study of the relative size of the non-factorisable next-to-next-to-leading order corrections compared to the factorisable ones. In the case of single Higgs production, after selection cuts are applied, the non-factorisable corrections are found to be mostly contained within the factorisable scale uncertainty bands. When no cuts are applied, instead, the non-factorisable corrections are slightly outside the scale uncertainty band. Interestingly, for double Higgs production, we find that both before and after applying cuts, non-factorisable corrections are enhanced compared to the single Higgs case. We trace this enhancement to the existence of delicate cancellations between the various leading-order Feynman diagrams, which are partly spoiled by radiative corrections. All the studied contributions have been implemented in proVBFH v1.2.0 and proVBFHH v1.1.0.