Application of the Principle of Maximum Conformality to the Hadroproduction of the Higgs Boson at the LHC

Abstract

We present improved pQCD predictions for Higgs boson hadroproduction at the Large Hadronic Collider (LHC) by applying the Principle of Maximum Conformality (PMC), a procedure which resums the pQCD series using the renormalization group (RG), thereby eliminating the dependence of the predictions on the choice of the renormalization scheme while minimizing sensitivity to the initial choice of the renormalization scale. In previous pQCD predictions for Higgs boson hadroproduction, it has been conventional to assume that the renormalization scale $\mu_r$ of the QCD coupling $\alpha_s(\mu_r)$ is the Higgs mass, and then to vary this choice over the range $1/2 m_H < \mu_r < 2 m_H $ in order to estimate the theory uncertainty. However, this error estimate is only sensitive to the non-conformal $\beta$ terms in the pQCD series, and thus it fails to correctly estimate the theory uncertainty in cases where pQCD series has large higher order contributions, as is the case for Higgs boson hadroproduction. Furthermore, this \mbox{\it ad hoc} choice of scale and range gives pQCD predictions which depend on the renormalization scheme being used, in contradiction to basic RG principles. In contrast, after applying the PMC, we obtain next-to-next-to-leading order RG resummed pQCD predictions for Higgs boson hadroproduction which are renormalization-scheme independent and have minimal sensitivity to the choice of the initial renormalization scale. Taking $m_H=125$ GeV, the PMC predictions for the $p p \to H X$ Higgs inclusive hadroproduction cross-sections for various LHC center-of-mass energies and the fiducial cross section $\sigma_{\rm fid}(pp\to H\to\gamma\gamma)$ are presented...... The PMC predictions show better agreement with the ATLAS measurements than the LHC-XS predictions which are based on conventional renormalization scale-setting.