Higgs boson finder and mass estimator: The Higgs boson to WW to leptons decay channel at the LHC

Authors

Vernon Barger, University of Wisconsin
Peisi Huang, University of WisconsinFollow

Date of this Version

2011

Citation

PHYSICAL REVIEW D 84, 093001 (2011)

Comments

Copyright 2011 American Physical Society

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.84.093001

Abstract

We exploit the spin and kinematic correlations in the decay of a scalar boson into a pair of real or virtual W-bosons, with both W-bosons decaying leptonically, for Higgs boson discovery at 7 TeV LHC energy with 10 fb^-1 luminosity. Without reconstruction of the events, we obtain estimators of the Higgs mass from the peak and width of the signal distribution in m_ll. The separation of signal and background with other distributions, such as the azimuthal angle between two W decay planes, the rapidity difference between the two leptons, missing E_T, and the p_T of leptons, are also prescribed. Our approach identifies the salient Higgs to dilepton signatures that allow subtraction of the continuum W * W * background.