Fully Differential Higgs Boson Production to Third Order in QCD

We present the first fully differential predictions for the production cross section of a Higgs boson via the gluon fusion mechanism at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (<math display="inline"><msup><mi mathvariant="normal">N</mi><mn>3</mn></msup><mi>LO</mi></math>) in QCD perturbation theory. Differential distributions are shown for the two-photon final state produced by the decay of the Higgs boson for a realistic set of fiducial cuts. The <math display="inline"><msup><mi mathvariant="normal">N</mi><mn>3</mn></msup><mi>LO</mi></math> corrections exhibit complex features and are in part larger than the inclusive <math display="inline"><msup><mi mathvariant="normal">N</mi><mn>3</mn></msup><mi>LO</mi></math> corrections to the production cross section. Overall, we observe that the inclusion of the <math display="inline"><msup><mi mathvariant="normal">N</mi><mn>3</mn></msup><mi>LO</mi></math> QCD corrections significantly reduces the perturbative uncertainties and leads to a stabilization of the perturbative expansion.