Towards NLO corrections to massive gg → VV production for off-shell Higgs studies at the LHC

We consider the production of two on-shell massive vector bosons through the “prompt” production process gg → VV and the production mediated by the exchange of a Higgs boson gg → H → VV. We present an interpolation method that allows the Monte Carlo (MC) integration of the two-loop massive amplitudes for gg → VV to be performed with only ∼ 1000 points evaluated in the phase space, while maintaining sufficient numerical control for phenomenological studies at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). A standard MC implementation, requiring ∼ 10000 points to be evaluated in the phase space, would not be practical due to the computational intensity required to obtain the two-loop amplitudes. The method is tested at leading-order (LO) in a variety of cases, and compared against results at LO obtained using an automatic one-loop provider. Limitations of the method are discussed.