How to find a Higgs boson with a mass between 155 and 180 GeV at the CERN LHC
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Abstract
We reconsider the signature of events with two charged leptons and missing energy as a signal for the detection of the standard model Higgs boson in the mass region $M(\mathrm{Higgs})$=155--180 GeV. It is shown that a few simple experimental criteria allow us to distinguish events originating from the Higgs boson decaying to $H\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{W}^{+}{W}^{\ensuremath{-}}$ from the nonresonant production of ${W}^{+}{W}^{\ensuremath{-}}X$ at the CERN LHC. With this set of cuts, signal to background ratios of about one to one are obtained, allowing a 5--10$\ensuremath{\sigma}$ detection with about 5 ${\mathrm{fb}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ of luminosity. This corresponds to less than one year of running at the initial lower luminosity $\mathcal{L}{=10}^{33} {\mathrm{cm}}^{\ensuremath{-}2}{\mathrm{s}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$. This is significantly better than for the hitherto considered Higgs boson detection mode $H\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{Z}^{0}{Z}^{0*}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}2{\mathcal{l}}^{+}2{\mathcal{l}}^{\ensuremath{-}}$, where in this mass range about 100 ${\mathrm{fb}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ of integrated luminosity are required for a $5\ensuremath{\sigma}$ signal.