LEADING ELECTROWEAK CORRECTION TO HIGGS-BOSON PRODUCTION AT PROTON COLLIDERS

At proton colliders, Higgs particles are dominantly produced in the gl uon-gluon fusion mechanism. The Higgs-boson-gluon coupling is mediated by heavy quark loops, and the process can serve to count the number o f heavy strongly interacting particles whose masses are generated by t he Higgs mechanism. We present the two-loop leading electroweak radiat ive correction to this coupling, which is quadratically proportional t o the heavy quark masses. It turns out that this correction is well un der control across the physically interesting quark mass ranges.