We provide a quantitative determination of the effective partonic kinematics for Higgs boson production in gluon fusion in terms of the collider energy at the LHC. We use the result to assess, as a function of the Higgs boson mass, whether the large $m_t$ approximation is adequate and Sudakov resummation advantageous. We argue that our results hold to all perturbative orders. Based on our results, we conclude that the full inclusion of finite top mass corrections is likely to be important for accurate phenomenology for a light Higgs boson with $m_H\sim 125\mathrm{GeV}$ at the LHC with $\sqrt{s}=14\mathrm{TeV}$.

• Received 26 April 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.102002