NLO QCD and parton-shower effects for Higgs-boson production in association with a hard photon via vector-boson fusion

Abstract

We present an implementation of Higgs-boson production in association with a hard, isolated photon via vector-boson fusion in the framework of the POWHEG BOX for the consistent matching of next-to-leading order QCD corrections with parton showers. The impact of parton-shower settings and non-perturbative effects on Higgs observables is studied and found to be small, while larger corrections are found for distributions of the sub-leading jets. Various approaches for the isolation of the photon are explored. For typical setups, the isolation strategy is found to have little impact on even the most sensitive observables.