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Creators/Authors contains: "Williams, Ciaran"

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  1. A<sc>bstract</sc> We present a calculation of pseudoscalar Higgs production in association with a jet at Next-to-Next-to Leading Order (NNLO) accuracy in QCD. We work in an effective field theory in whichmt→ ∞ resulting in effective operators which couple the pseudoscalar to gluons and (massless) quarks. We have calculated all of the relevant amplitudes for the two-loop, one-loop and tree-level contributions. As a cross-check of our calculation we have re-calculated all of the scalar Higgs plus parton amplitudes and perform a detailed comparison to the literature. In order to regulate the infra-red singularities present at this order we employ theN-jettiness slicing method. In addition to a detailed validation of our calculation at this order we investigate LHC phenomenology for a selection of pseudoscalar Higgs masses. Our results are implemented into the parton-level Monte Carlo code MCFM. 
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  2. A<sc>bstract</sc> We present next-to-leading order perturbative QCD predictions for four-jet-like event-shape observables in hadronic Higgs decays. To this end, we take into account two Higgs-decay categories: involving either the Yukawa-induced decay to a$${\text{b}}\overline{{\text{b}} }$$pair or the loop-induced decay to two gluons via an effective Higgs-gluon-gluon coupling. We present results for distributions related to the event-shape variables thrust minor, light-hemisphere mass, narrow jet broadening,D-parameter, and Durham four-to-three-jet transition variable. For each of these observables we study the impact of higher-order corrections and compare their size and shape in the two Higgs-decay categories. We find large NLO corrections with a visible shape difference between the two decay modes, leading to a significant shift of the peak in distributions related to the H→gg decay mode. 
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  3. A bstract We present a next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) QCD calculation of the bottom-induced contributions to the production of a Higgs boson plus a jet, i.e. the process pp → H + j to $$ \mathcal{O}\left({y}_b^2{\alpha}_s^3\right) $$ O y b 2 α s 3 . We work in the five-flavor scheme (5FS) in which the bottom quark mass is retained only in the coupling to the Higgs boson. Our calculation uses N -jettiness slicing to regulate infrared divergences, allowing for fully-differential predictions for collider observables. After extensively validating the methodology, we present results for the 13 TeV LHC. Our NNLO predictions show a marked improvement in the overall renormalization and factorization scale dependence, the latter of which proves to be particularly troublesome for 5FS calculations at lower orders. In addition, using the same methodology we present a NNLO computation of $$ b\overline{b} $$ b b ¯ → H . Our results are implemented into MCFM. 
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  4. null (Ed.)
    A bstract In this paper we present a fully-differential calculation for the contributions to the partial widths H → $$ b\overline{b} $$ b b ¯ and H → $$ c\overline{c} $$ c c ¯ that are sensitive to the top quark Yukawa coupling y t to order $$ {\alpha}_s^3 $$ α s 3 . These contributions first enter at order $$ {\alpha}_s^2 $$ α s 2 through terms proportional to y t y q ( q = b, c ). At order $$ {\alpha}_s^3 $$ α s 3 corrections to the mixed terms are present as well as a new contribution proportional to $$ {y}_t^2 $$ y t 2 . Our results retain the mass of the final-state quarks throughout, while the top quark is integrated out resulting in an effective field theory (EFT). Our results are implemented into a Monte Carlo code allowing for the application of arbitrary final-state selection cuts. As an example we present differential distributions for observables in the Higgs boson rest frame using the Durham jet clustering algorithm. We find that the total impact of the top-induced (i.e. EFT) pieces is sensitive to the nature of the final-state cuts, particularly b -tagging and c -tagging requirements. For bottom quarks, the EFT pieces contribute to the total width (and differential distributions) at around the percent level. The impact is much bigger for the H → $$ c\overline{c} $$ c c ¯ channel, with effects as large as 15%. We show however that their impact can be significantly reduced by the application of jet-tagging selection cuts. 
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