Di-vector boson production in association with a Higgs boson at hadron colliders

Abstract

We consider the production of a Higgs boson in association with two electroweak vector bosons at hadron colliders. In particular, we examine $\gamma \gamma H$, $\gamma ZH$, $ZZH$, and $W^{+}{W}^{-}H$ production at the LHC (14 TeV), HE-LHC (27 TeV), and FCC-hh (100 TeV) colliders. Our main focus is to estimate the gluon-gluon ($gg$) channel ($gg\to V{V}^{\prime }H$) contributions to $pp\to V{V}^{\prime }H(V,V^{\prime }=\gamma ,Z,W)$ and compare them with corresponding contributions arising from the quark-quark ($qq$) channel. Technically, the leading order $gg$ channel contribution to $pp\to V{V}^{\prime }H$ cross section is an NNLO correction in ${\alpha }_s$. In the processes under consideration, we find that in the $gg$ channel, $W^{+}{W}^{-}H$ has the largest cross section. However, relative contribution of the $gg$ channel is more important for the $pp\to ZZH$ production. At the FCC-hh, $gg\to ZZH$ contribution is comparable with the NLO QCD correction to $qq\to ZZH$. We also compute the cross sections when $W$ and $Z$-bosons are polarized. In the production of $W^{+}{W}^{-}H$ and $ZZH$, we find that the $gg$ channel contributes more significantly when the vector bosons are longitudinally polarized. By examining such events, one can increase the fraction of the $gg$ channel contribution to these processes. Further, we have studied beyond-the-standard-model effects in the $\kappa$-framework. We find that the $gg$ channel processes $ZZH$ and $WWH$ have very mild dependence on ${\kappa }_{\lambda }$, but strong dependence on ${\kappa }_t$ and ${\kappa }_V$. The $qq$ channel processes mainly depend on ${\kappa }_V$. Dependence of the $gg$ channel contribution on ${\kappa }_V$ is stronger than that of the $qq$ channel contribution. Therefore focusing on events with longitudinally polarized $W$ and $Z$-bosons, one can find stronger dependence on ${\kappa }_V$ that can help us measure this parameter.

Comments: Version to appear in PRD. This version includes the results for polarized final states