Eur. Phys. J. C (2014) 74: 2825
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-014-2825-3

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

The Higgs boson inclusive decay channels and up to four-loop level

Department of Physics, Chongqing University, Chongqing, 401331, People’s Republic of China

^* e-mail: wuxg@cqu.edu.cn

Received: 14 January 2014
Accepted: 14 March 2014
Published online: 9 April 2014

Abstract

The principle of maximum conformality (PMC) has been suggested to eliminate the renormalization scheme and renormalization scale uncertainties, which are unavoidable for the conventional scale setting and are usually important errors for theoretical estimations. In this paper, by applying PMC scale setting, we analyze two important inclusive Standard Model Higgs decay channels, and , up to four-loop and three-loop levels, respectively. After PMC scale setting, it is found that the conventional scale uncertainty for these two channels can be eliminated to a high degree. There is small residual initial scale dependence for the Higgs decay widths due to unknown higher-order terms. Up to four-loop level, we obtain MeV and up to three-loop level, we obtain MeV, where the first error is caused by varying GeV and the second error for is caused by varying the -running mass GeV. Taking as an example, we present a comparison of three BLM-based scale-setting approaches, e.g. the PMC-I approach based on the PMC–BLM correspondence, the -scheme and the seBLM approach, all of which are designed to provide effective ways to identify non-conformal -series at each perturbative order. At four-loop level, all those approaches lead to good pQCD convergence, they have almost the same pQCD series, and their predictions are almost independent on the initial renormalization scale. In this sense, those approaches are equivalent to each other.