Top-Bottom Interference Contribution to Fully-Inclusive Higgs Production

Abstract

We evaluate the top-bottom interference contribution to the fully-inclusive Higgs production cross section at next-to-next-to-leading order in QCD. Although bottom-quark-mass effects are power-suppressed, the accuracy of state-of-the-art theory predictions makes an exact determination of this effect indispensable. The total effect of the interference at 13 TeV is $-1.99(1)^{+0.30}_{-0.15}$ pb, while the pure $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_s^4)$ correction is 0.43 pb. With this result, we address one of the leading theory uncertainties of the cross section.