Precision study of \\begin{document}${ {W^-W^+H}}$\\end{document} production including parton shower effects at CERN Large Hadron Collider

Abstract

The precision study of \\begin{document}$W^-W^+H$\\end{document} production with subsequent \\begin{document}$W^{\\pm} \\rightarrow l^{\\pm} \\overset{ _{(-)}}{\\nu_{l}}$\\end{document} and \\begin{document}$H \\rightarrow b\\bar{b}$\\end{document} decays at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) aids in the investigation of Higgs gauge couplings and the search for new physics beyond the standard model. In this study, we calculate the shower-matched next-to-leading order QCD and electroweak (EW) corrections from the \\begin{document}$q\\bar{q}$\\end{document} annihilation and photon-induced channels to the \\begin{document}$W^-W^+H$\\end{document} production at the \\begin{document}$14~ {\\rm TeV}$\\end{document} LHC. We deal with the subsequent decays of Higgs and \\begin{document}$W^{\\pm}$\\end{document} bosons by adopting the MADSPIN method. Both the integrated cross section and some kinematic distributions of \\begin{document}$W^{\\pm}$\\end{document} , H, and their decay products are provided. We find that the QCD correction significantly enhances the leading-order differential cross section, while the EW correction from the \\begin{document}$q\\bar{q}$\\end{document} annihilation channel obviously suppresses it, especially in the high energy phase-space region, due to the Sudakov effect. The \\begin{document}$q\\gamma$\\end{document} - and \\begin{document}$\\gamma\\gamma$\\end{document} -induced relative corrections are positive and insensitive to the transverse momenta of \\begin{document}$W^{\\pm}$\\end{document} , H, and their decay products. These photon-induced corrections compensate the negative \\begin{document}$q\\bar{q}$\\end{document} -initiated EW correction, and become the dominant EW contribution as the increment of the \\begin{document}$pp$\\end{document} colliding energy. The parton shower (PS) effects on kinematic distributions are not negligible. The relative PS correction to the b-jet transverse momentum distribution can exceed 100% in the high \\begin{document}$p_{T, b}$\\end{document} region. Moreover, we investigate the scale and PDF uncertainties, and find that the theoretical error of the \\begin{document}${\\rm QCD}+{\\rm EW}+q\\gamma+\\gamma\\gamma$\\end{document} -corrected integrated cross section mainly originates from the renormalization scale dependence of the QCD correction.