Cuts for two-body decays at colliders
Gavin P. Salam, Emma Slade
Fixed-order perturbative calculations of fiducial cross sections for two-body decay processes at colliders show disturbing sensitivity to unphysically low momentum scales and, in the case of H→γγ in gluon fusion, poor convergence. Such problems have their origins in an interplay between the behaviour of standard experimental cuts at small transverse momenta (pt) and logarithmic perturbative contributions. We illustrate how this interplay leads to a factorially divergent structure in the perturbative series that sets in already from the first orders. We propose simple modifications of fiducial cuts to eliminate their key incriminating characteristic, a linear dependence of the acceptance on the Higgs or Z-boson pt, replacing it with quadratic dependence. This brings major improvements in the behaviour of the perturbative expansion. More elaborate cuts can achieve an acceptance that is independent of the Higgs pt at low pt, with a variety of consequent advantages.