Precise predictions for event shapes in hadronic Higgs decays

A bstract We present NNLO QCD predictions for a wide range of event-shape observables in hadronic Higgs decays, taking into account the two dominant decay modes H → gg and $$ H\to b\overline{b} $$ H → b b ¯ . Specifically, we consider the six classical event shapes thrust, heavy jet mass, C -parameter, total and wide jet broadening, and the three-jet resolution y 23 in the Durham algorithm. We also present results for the soft-drop variant of thrust. Decays of the Higgs boson to two gluons are treated in the heavy-top limit, whereas decays to a bottom-quark pair are mediated by a non-vanishing Yukawa coupling, despite considering kinematically massless quarks. Our results highlight the importance of NNLO QCD corrections in the calculation of event-shape observables in hadronic Higgs decays.