Jet Vetoes interfering with H → WW

Abstract

Far off-shell Higgs production in H → WW, ZZ, is a particularly powerful probe of Higgs properties, allowing one to disentangle Higgs width and coupling information unavailable in on-shell rate measurements. These measurements require an understanding of the cross section in the far off-shell region in the presence of realistic experimental cuts. We analytically study the effect of a p [subscript T] jet veto on far off-shell cross sections, including signal-background interference, by utilizing hard functions in the soft collinear effective theory that are differential in the decay products of the W/Z. Summing large logarithms of M[subscript WW] [over p superscript Teto subscript T] , we find that the jet veto induces a strong dependence on M [subscript WW], modifying distributions in M [subscript WW] and M [subscript T]. The example of gg → H → WW is used to demonstrate these effects at next to leading log order. We also discuss the importance of jet vetoes and jet binning for the recent program to extract Higgs couplings and widths from far off-shell cross sections.