Higgs Boson Production in Gluon Fusion through the Next-to-Next-to-Leading Power in Quark Mass

• Author / Creator

  Modi, Sneh K

• The asymptotic behavior of the elementary particle scattering amplitudes at high-energy is a fundamental problem of quantum field theory.
  In the leading order of the expansion in inverse powers of the characteristic energy scale, the problem has been solved decades ago in the classical works of Sudakov and others
  \cite{Sudakov:1954sw,Frenkel:1976bj,Smilga:1979uj,Mueller:1979ih,Collins:1980ih,Sen:1981sd,Sterman:1986aj,Korchemsky:1988hd,Korchemsky:1988pn}.
  Beyond this approximation, however, the problem becomes far more challenging and requires the development of principally new theoretical techniques.
  Only recently the solution has been found for the leading mass-suppressed amplitudes revealing a number of amazing new effects in quantum field theory \cite{Penin2015,Penin2016,Liu2017,Liu:2017vkm,Liu2018}.
  In this thesis, we make further advances in the analysis and consider for the first time a high-energy process at the next-to-next-to-leading power.

  The main focus of the thesis is the analysis of the QCD effects in the light quark mediated Higgs boson production via gluon fusion.
  We study the dominant ``double-logarithmic" radiative corrections enhanced by the second power of the logarithm of the light quark to Higgs boson mass ratio per each power of strong coupling constant $\alphas$.
  The analytic result is obtained for the three-loop $\alphas^3$ contribution through the third power in the quark mass.
  The all-order double-logarithmic asymptotic result is then obtained in two complementary approximations: (i) the large number of colors limit which is supposed to catch the qualitative behavior of real QCD, and (ii) in the Abelian limit which fully reveals the structure of the double-logarithmic result at the next-to-next-to-leading power.

  The second problem considered in the thesis is the asymptotic behavior of the massive quark scattering amplitudes by an external color singlet field.
  The all-order result at next-to-leading power in quark mass for which was first obtained in \cite{Liu:2017vkm,Liu_2018}.
  We complete this previous analysis and obtain for the first time the fully analytic asymptotic result for the leading mass-suppressed term in the double-logarithmic approximation.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Particle Physics Theory
  • High Energy Physics
  • Higgs Boson

• Graduation date

  Fall 2023

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-w757-0w65

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.