Gluon fusion and $b\bar{b}$ corrections to $H W^+ W^- / H Z Z$ production in the POWHEG-BOX

Abstract

The study of the Higgs boson properties is one of the most important tasks to be accomplished in the next years, at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and at future colliders such as the Future Circular Collider in hadron-hadron mode (FCC-hh), the potential 100 TeV follow-up of the LHC machine. In this view the precise study of the Higgs couplings to weak gauge bosons is crucial and requires as much information as possible. After the recent calculation of the next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the production cross sections and differential distributions of a Standard Model Higgs boson in association with a pair of weak bosons, matched with parton shower in the POWHEG-BOX framework, we present the gluon fusion correction $g g\to H W^+_{} W^-_{} ( H Z Z)$ to the process $p p \to H W^+_{} W^-_{} (H Z Z)$. This correction can be sizeable and amounts to $+3\,\%$ ($+10\,\%$) in the $H W^+_{} W^-_{}$ process and $+5\,\%$ ($+18\,\%$) in the $H Z Z$ process at the LHC (FCC-hh). We also present the first study of the impact of the bottom--quark initiated channels $b\bar{b}\to H W^+_{} W^-_{} / H Z Z$ and find that they induce a significant $+18\,\%$ correction in the $H W^+_{} W^-_{}$ channel at the FCC-hh. We present results on total cross sections and distributions at the LHC and at the FCC-hh.