Eur. Phys. J. C (2015) 75: 267
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-015-3475-9

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Higgs production in association with a single top quark at the LHC

¹ Centre for Cosmology, Particle Physics and Phenomenology (CP3), Université catholique de Louvain, 1348, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
² Theoretische Natuurkunde and IIHE/ELEM, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and International Solvay Institutes, Pleinlaan 2, 1050, Brussels, Belgium
³ UMR 7589, LPTHE, Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ. Paris 06, 75005, Paris, France
⁴ UMR 7589, LPTHE, CNRS, 75005, Paris, France

^* e-mail: kentarou.mawatari@vub.ac.be

Received: 14 April 2015
Accepted: 19 May 2015
Published online: 18 June 2015

Abstract

We present a detailed study of Higgs boson production in association with a single top quark at the LHC, at next-to-leading order accuracy in QCD. We consider total and differential cross sections, at the parton level as well as by matching short distance events to parton showers, for both t-channel and s-channel production. We provide predictions relevant for the LHC at 13 TeV together with a thorough evaluation of the residual uncertainties coming from scale variation, parton distributions, strong coupling constant and heavy quark masses. In addition, for t-channel production, we compare results as obtained in the 4-flavour and 5-flavour schemes, pinning down the most relevant differences between them. Finally, we study the sensitivity to a non-standard-model relative phase between the Higgs couplings to the top quark and to the weak bosons.