Gluon-induced Higgs-strahlung at next-to-leading order QCD

A bstract Gluon-induced contributions to the associated production of a Higgs and a Z boson are calculated with NLO accuracy in QCD. They constitute a significant contribution to the cross section for this process. The perturbative correction factor ( K -factor) is calculated in the limit of infinite top-quark and vanishing bottom-quark masses. The qualitative similarity of the results to the well-known ones for the gluon-fusion process gg → H allows to conclude that rescaling the LO prediction by this K -factor leads to a reliable NLO result and realistic error estimate due to missing higher-order perturbative effects. We consider the total inclusive cross section as well as a scenario with a boosted Higgs boson, where the Higgs boson’s transverse momentum is restricted to values p T,H > 200 GeV. In both cases, we find large correction factors K ≈ 2 in most of the parameter space.