Decays of scalar and pseudoscalar Higgs bosons into fermions: Two-loop QCD corrections to the Higgs-quark-antiquark amplitude

As a first step in the aim of arriving at a differential description of neutral Higgs boson decays into heavy quarks, $h \to Q {\bar Q}X$, to second order in the QCD coupling $\alpha_S$, we have computed the $hQ{\bar Q}$ amplitude at the two-loop level in QCD for a general neutral Higgs boson which has both scalar and pseudoscalar couplings to quarks. This amplitude is given in terms of a scalar and a pseudoscalar vertex form factor, for which we present closed analytic expressions in terms of one-dimensional harmonic polylogarithms of maximum weight 4. The results hold for arbitrary four-momentum squared, $q^2$, of the Higgs boson and of the heavy quark mass, $m$. Moreover we derive the approximate expressions of these form factors near threshold and in the asymptotic regime $m^2/q^2 \ll 1$.