Fermionic Electroweak NNLO Corrections to $e^+ e^- \to ZH$ with Polarized Beams and Different Renormalization Schemes

Abstract

Recently, the next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) electroweak corrections with fermion loops to the Higgsstrahling process were computed. Here we present numerical results for polarized electron/positron beams, as well as for two input parameter schemes known as the $\alpha(0)$ and $G_\mu$ schemes. The size of the NNLO corrections strongly depends on the beam polarization, leading to an increase of the $ZH$ cross-section by 0.76% for $e^+_{\rm L} e^-_{\rm R}$ beams, and a decrease of 0.04% for $e^+_{\rm R} e^-_{\rm L}$ beams. Furthermore, inclusion of the NNLO corrections is found to significantly reduce the discrepancy between the results in the $\alpha(0)$ and $G_\mu$ schemes. Using the remaining difference, together with other methods, the theory uncertainty from missing bosonic electroweak corrections is estimated to be less than 0.3%.