associated production at the LHC.

We study Higgs boson production in association with a top quark and a boson at the LHC. At NLO in QCD, interferes with [Formula: see text] and a procedure to meaningfully separate the two processes needs to be employed. In order to define production for both total rates and differential distributions, we consider the diagram removal and diagram subtraction techniques that have been previously proposed for treating intermediate resonances at NLO, in particular in the context of production.

Higher-order QCD predictions for dark matter production at the LHC in simplified models with -channel mediators.

Weakly interacting dark matter particles can be pair-produced at colliders and detected through signatures featuring missing energy in association with either QCD/EW radiation or heavy quarks. In order to constrain the mass and the couplings to standard model particles, accurate and precise predictions for production cross sections and distributions are of prime importance. In this work, we consider various simplified models with -channel mediators.

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

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 -channel and -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.

Higgs characterisation at NLO in QCD: CP properties of the top-quark Yukawa interaction.

At the LHC the CP properties of the top-quark Yukawa interaction can be probed through Higgs production in gluon fusion or in association with top quarks. We consider the possibility for both CP-even and CP-odd couplings to the top quark to be present, and study CP-sensitive observables at next-to-leading order (NLO) in QCD, including parton-shower effects. We show that the inclusion of NLO corrections sizeably reduces the theoretical uncertainties, and confirm that di-jet correlations in [Formula: see text] jet production through gluon fusion and correlations of the top-quark decay products in [Formula: see text] production can provide sensitive probes of the CP nature of the Higgs interactions.

Higgs characterisation via vector-boson fusion and associated production: NLO and parton-shower effects.

Vector-boson fusion and associated production at the LHC can provide key information on the strength and structure of the Higgs couplings to the Standard Model particles. Using an effective field theory approach, we study the effects of next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD corrections matched to a parton shower on selected observables for various spin-0 hypotheses. We find that inclusion of NLO corrections is needed to reduce the theoretical uncertainties on the total rates as well as to reliably predict the shapes of the distributions.

Unravelling tth via the matrix element method.

Associated production of the Higgs boson with a top-antitop pair is a key channel to gather further information on the nature of the newly discovered boson at the LHC. Experimentally, however, its observation is very challenging due to the combination of small rates, difficult multijet final states, and overwhelming backgrounds. In the standard model, the largest number of events is expected when h→bb, giving rise to a W+ W- bbbb signature, deluged in tt + jets.

Top B physics at the LHC.

In top-pair events where at least one of the tops decays semileptonically, the identification of the lepton charge allows us to tag not only the top quark charge but also that of the subsequent b quark. In cases where the b also decays semileptonically, the charge of the two leptons can be used to probe CP violation in heavy flavor mixing and decays. This strategy to measure CP violation is independent of those adopted so far in experiments, and can already constrain non standard model sources of CP violation with current and near future LHC data.

Higgs boson production via vector-boson fusion at next-to-next-to-leading order in QCD.

We present the total cross sections at next-to-next-to-leading order in the strong coupling for Higgs boson production via weak-boson fusion. Our results are obtained via the structure function approach, which builds upon the approximate, though very accurate, factorization of the QCD corrections between the two quark lines. The theoretical uncertainty on the total cross sections at the LHC from higher order corrections and the parton distribution uncertainties are estimated at the 2% level each for a wide range of Higgs boson masses.