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State-of-the-art electroweak Higgs boson pair production in association with two jets at the LHC in the Standard Model and beyond
by Jens Braun, Pia Bredt, Gudrun Heinrich, Marius Höfer, Barbara Jäger, Alexander Karlberg, Simon Reinhardt
Submission summary
| Authors (as registered SciPost users): | Jens Braun · Gudrun Heinrich · Alexander Karlberg |
| Submission information | |
|---|---|
| Preprint Link: | scipost_202601_00064v1 (pdf) |
| Date submitted: | Jan. 27, 2026, 9:41 a.m. |
| Submitted by: | Alexander Karlberg |
| Submitted to: | SciPost Physics Community Reports |
| for consideration in Collection: |
| Ontological classification | |
|---|---|
| Academic field: | Physics |
| Specialties: |
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| Approach: | Phenomenological |
Abstract
We present a systematic comparison of two state-of-the-art tools for the simulation of Higgs boson pair production via vector boson fusion (VBF) as implemented in the Monte-Carlo tools GoSam+Whizard and the POWHEG-BOX. Cross sections and distributions are provided within the Standard Model and beyond, within scenarios typical for experimental physics analyses, and for a range of energies of relevance to the LHC and its upcoming high luminosity phase. We further perform a detailed study of the so-called VBF approximation, in particular in the presence of anomalous Higgs boson couplings.
Author comments upon resubmission
Dear Editor,
we would like to thank both Referees for their valuable comments. All suggestions
of the Referees have been addressed in an updated version of our manuscript.
Concerning Referee 2’s second comment let us provide some additional expla-
nation: We added more details on the VBF approximation used in our work at
the beginning of Sec. 2. We would like to mention that, in agreement with ver-
sions of the VBF approximation implemented in the literature and public programs
like MCFM, POWHEG-BOX, VBFNLO we neglect all s-channel contributions, but
do take both t-channel and u-channel contributions into account individually, only
neglecting interferences between t- and u-channel diagrams. Such interference con-
tributions only occur in same-flavor partonic channels and have been found to be
very small in the literature. For a detailed assessment of the VBF approximation, we
would like to refer to a detailed investigation of the related single-Higgs VBF process
in M. Ciccolini, A. Denner and S. Dittmaier, Phys. Rev. D 77 (2008), 013002.
For the comment regarding the scale choice, we have added a page of discussion and a plot, including comparison to some of the scales that the referee suggested. We have not included the dijet invariant mass, as this scale has an average of about ~500 GeV (hence the typical cut of this order), and is therefore clearly a bad scale choice in this context.
We hope that having addressed the Referees’ comments our manuscript can now be
considered suitable for publication.
Best wishes,
Jens Braun, Pia Bredt, Gudrun Heinrich, Marius H¨ofer, Barbara J¨ager, Alexander
Karlberg, Simon Reinhardt
we would like to thank both Referees for their valuable comments. All suggestions
of the Referees have been addressed in an updated version of our manuscript.
Concerning Referee 2’s second comment let us provide some additional expla-
nation: We added more details on the VBF approximation used in our work at
the beginning of Sec. 2. We would like to mention that, in agreement with ver-
sions of the VBF approximation implemented in the literature and public programs
like MCFM, POWHEG-BOX, VBFNLO we neglect all s-channel contributions, but
do take both t-channel and u-channel contributions into account individually, only
neglecting interferences between t- and u-channel diagrams. Such interference con-
tributions only occur in same-flavor partonic channels and have been found to be
very small in the literature. For a detailed assessment of the VBF approximation, we
would like to refer to a detailed investigation of the related single-Higgs VBF process
in M. Ciccolini, A. Denner and S. Dittmaier, Phys. Rev. D 77 (2008), 013002.
For the comment regarding the scale choice, we have added a page of discussion and a plot, including comparison to some of the scales that the referee suggested. We have not included the dijet invariant mass, as this scale has an average of about ~500 GeV (hence the typical cut of this order), and is therefore clearly a bad scale choice in this context.
We hope that having addressed the Referees’ comments our manuscript can now be
considered suitable for publication.
Best wishes,
Jens Braun, Pia Bredt, Gudrun Heinrich, Marius H¨ofer, Barbara J¨ager, Alexander
Karlberg, Simon Reinhardt
List of changes
We have addressed all the comments and implemented them according to the referees' suggestions.
Current status:
Refereeing in preparation