Fully differential Higgs boson production and the di-photon signal through next-to-next-to-leading order

Abstract We describe a calculation of the fully differential cross section for Higgs boson production in the gluon fusion channel through next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in perturbative QCD. The decay of the Higgs boson into two photons is included. Technical aspects of the computation are discussed in detail. The implementation of the calculation into a numerical code, called FEHiP , is described. The NNLO K -factors for completely realistic photon acceptances and isolation cuts, including those employed by the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations, are computed. We study various distributions of the photons from Higgs decay through NNLO.