The Higgs transverse momentum spectrum with finite quark masses beyond leading order

Abstract

We apply the leading-log high-energy resummation technique recently derived by some of us to the transverse momentum distribution for production of a Higgs boson in gluon fusion. We use our results to obtain information on mass-dependent corrections to this observable, which is only known at leading order when exact mass dependence is included. In the low p[subscript T] region we discuss the all-order exponentiation of collinear bottom mass logarithms. In the high p[subscript T] region we show that the infinite top mass approximation loses accuracy as a power of p[subscript T], while the accuracy of the high-energy approximation is approximately constant as p[subscript T] grows. We argue that a good approximation to the NLO result for p[subscript T] ≳ 200 GeV can be obtained by combining the full LO result with a K-factor computed using the high-energy approximation.