arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to M. Kerner.
We briefly review numerical methods for calculations beyond one loop and then describe new developments within the method of sector decomposition in more detail. We also discuss applications to two-loop integrals involving several mass scales.
We study the effects of the exact top-quark mass dependent two-loop corrections to Higgs boson pair production by gluon fusion at the LHC and at a 100 TeV hadron collider. We perform a detailed comparison of the full next-to-leading order result to various approximations at the level of differential distributions and also analyse non-standard Higgs self-coupling scenarios. We find that the different next-to-leading order approximations differ from the full result by up to 50 percent in relevant differential distributions. This clearly stresses the importance of the full NLO result.
We present the calculation of the cross section and invariant mass distribution for Higgs boson pair production in gluon fusion at next-to-leading order (NLO) in QCD. Top-quark masses are fully taken into account throughout the calculation. The virtual two-loop amplitude has been generated using an extension of the program GoSam supplemented with an interface to Reduze for the integral reduction. The occurring integrals have been calculated numerically using the program SecDec. Our results, including the full top-quark mass dependence for the first time, allow us to assess the validity of various approximations proposed in the literature, which we also recalculate. We find substantial deviations between the NLO result and the different approximations, which emphasizes the importance of including the full top-quark mass dependence at NLO.
We report on the development of tools to calculate loop integrals and amplitudes beyond one loop. In particular, we review new features of the program SecDec which can be used for the numerical evaluation of parametric integrals like multi-loop integrals.
SecDec is a program which can be used for the factorization of dimensionally regulated poles from parametric integrals, in particular multi-loop integrals, and the subsequent numerical evaluation of the finite coefficients. Here we present version 3.0 of the program, which has major improvements compared to version 2: it is faster, contains new decomposition strategies, an improved user interface and various other new features which extend the range of applicability.
VBFNLO is a flexible parton level Monte Carlo program for the simulation of vector boson fusion (VBF), double and triple vector boson (plus jet) production as well as QCD-induced single and double vector boson production plus two jets in hadronic collisions at next-to-leading order (NLO) in the strong coupling constant. Furthermore, Higgs boson plus two jet production via gluon fusion at the one-loop level is included. This note briefly describes the main additional features and processes that have been added in the new release -- VBFNLO Version 2.7.0. At NLO QCD several new processes are available. These are $W^\pmγ$ and $HH$ production in VBF, the QCD-induced single and double vector boson plus two jets processes $W^\pm jj$, $W^\pm Zjj$, $W^\pmγjj$, same-sign $W^\pm W^\pm jj$, and the Higgs-strahlung process $W^\pm H$ (plus jet) production. Anomalous couplings are now available for all VBF, diboson and triboson (plus jet) processes including the new VBF $W^\pmγjj$ implementation, as well as in the Higgs-strahlung (plus jet) process. Semi-leptonic decay modes are supported for the following diboson, triboson and VBF processes: $VV$, $VVV$, $VVγ$ production and $VV$ production via VBF, where $V$ denotes a massive gauge boson, i.e. $W^\pm$ or $Z$. Additionally, the VBF-Higgs production process with decay into $WW$ or $ZZ$ supports semi-leptonic decays of the gauge bosons. All these semi-leptonic processes contain the possibility to include anomalous gauge boson couplings.
Vbfnlo is a flexible parton level Monte Carlo program for the simulation of vector boson fusion (VBF), double and triple vector boson (plus jet) production in hadronic collisions at next-to-leading order (NLO) in the strong coupling constant, as well as Higgs boson plus two jet production via gluon fusion at the one-loop level. This note briefly describes the main additional features and processes that have been added in the new release -- Vbfnlo Version 2.6.0. At NLO QCD diboson production (Wγ, WZ, ZZ, Zγand γγ), same-sign W pair production via vector boson fusion and the process Wγγj have been implemented (for which one-loop tensor integrals up to six-point functions are included). In addition, gluon induced diboson production can be studied separately at the leading order (one-loop) level. The diboson processes WW, WZ and Wγcan be run with anomalous gauge boson couplings, and anomalous couplings between a Higgs and a pair of gauge bosons is included in WW, ZZ, Zγand γγdiboson production. The code has also been extended to include anomalous gauge boson couplings for single vector boson production via VBF, and a spin-2 model has been implemented for diboson pair production via vector boson fusion.