https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-006-0158-6
Regular Article - Experimental Physics
Search for Higgs bosons decaying to WW in e+e- collisions at LEP
1
Physikalisches Institut, RWTH-Aachen, 52056, Aachen, Germany
2
Laboratoire de Physique des Particules (LAPP), IN2P3-CNRS, 74019, Annecy-le-Vieux Cedex, France
3
Institut de Física d’Altes Energies, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193, Bellaterra (Barcelona), Spain
4
Dipartimento di Fisica, INFN Sezione di Bari, 70126, Bari, Italy
5
Institute of High Energy Physics, Academia Sinica, Beijing, P.R. China
6
European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN), 1211, Geneva 23, Switzerland
7
Laboratoire de Physique Corpusculaire, Université Blaise Pascal, IN2P3-CNRS, Clermont-Ferrand, 63177, Aubière, France
8
Niels Bohr Institute, 2100, Copenhagen, Denmark
9
Nuclear Research Center Demokritos (NRCD), 15310, Attiki, Greece
10
Laboratoire Leprince-Ringuet, Ecole Polytechnique, IN2P3-CNRS, 91128, Palaiseau Cedex, France
11
Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Firenze, INFN Sezione di Firenze, 50125, Firenze, Italy
12
Laboratori Nazionali dell’INFN (LNF-INFN), 00044, Frascati, Italy
13
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8QQ, UK
14
Utah Valley State College, Orem, UT, 84058, USA
15
Kirchhoff-Institut für Physik, Universität Heidelberg, 69120, Heidelberg, Germany
16
Department of Physics, Imperial College, London, SW7 2BZ, UK
17
Institut für Experimentalphysik, Universität Innsbruck, 6020, Innsbruck, Austria
18
Department of Physics, University of Lancaster, Lancaster, LA1 4YB, UK
19
Institut de Physique Nucléaire, Département de Physique, Université Catholique de Louvain, 1348, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
20
Institut für Physik, Universität Mainz, 55099, Mainz, Germany
21
Centre de Physique des Particules de Marseille, Univ Méditerranée, IN2P3-CNRS, 13288, Marseille, France
22
Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Milano e INFN Sezione di Milano, 20133, Milano, Italy
23
Max-Planck-Institut für Physik, Werner-Heisenberg-Institut, 80805, München, Germany
24
Laboratoire de l’Accélérateur Linéaire, Université de Paris-Sud, IN2P3-CNRS, 91898, Orsay Cedex, France
25
Dipartimento di Fisica dell’Università, INFN Sezione di Pisa, e Scuola Normale Superiore, 56010, Pisa, Italy
26
Department of Physics, Royal Holloway & Bedford New College, University of London, Egham, Surrey, TW20 OEX, UK
27
Particle Physics Department, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, Oxon, OX11 OQX, UK
28
CEA, DAPNIA/Service de Physique des Particules, CE-Saclay, 91191, Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France
29
Institute for Particle Physics, University of California at Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, USA
30
Department of Physics, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S3 7RH, UK
31
Fachbereich Physik, Universität Siegen, 57068, Siegen, Germany
32
Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Trieste e INFN Sezione di Trieste, 34127, Trieste, Italy
33
Experimental Elementary Particle Physics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA
34
Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, 53706, USA
35
Institute for Particle Physics, ETH Hönggerberg, 8093, Zürich, Switzerland
* e-mail: Roberto.Tenchini@cern.ch
Received:
11
May
2006
Published online:
28
November
2006
A search for Higgs bosons produced in association with a fermion pair, and decaying to WW, is performed with the data collected by the ALEPH detector at centre-of-mass energies ranging from 191 to 209 GeV. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 453.2 pb-1. Thirteen exclusive selections are developed according to the different final state topologies. No statistically significant evidence for a Higgs boson decaying into a WW pair has been found. An upper limit is derived, as a function of the Higgs boson mass, on the product of the e+e-→Hff̄ cross section and the H→WW branching ratio. The data on the search for H→WW are combined with previously published ALEPH results on the search for H→γγ, to significantly extend the limits on the mass of a fermiophobic Higgs boson.
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2007