Eur. Phys. J. C (2008) 53: 329-347
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-007-0485-2

Special Article - Scientific Note

Search for a standard model Higgs boson in CMS via vector boson fusion in the H→WW→lνlν channel

¹ Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey
² Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, P.O. Box 500, Batavia, 60510-5011, Illinois, USA
³ Institute for Nuclear Research and Nuclear Energy, Bulgaria Academy of Science, Sofia, Bulgaria
⁴ Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, USA
⁵ University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA
⁶ Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA

^* e-mail: efe@fnal.gov

Received: 6 June 2007
Revised: 14 November 2007
Published online: 4 December 2007

Abstract

We present the potential for discovering the standard model Higgs boson produced via the vector-boson fusion mechanism. We considered the decay of Higgs bosons to the W⁺W^- final state, with both W-bosons subsequently decaying leptonically. The main background is tt̄ produced in association with one or more jets. This study is based on a full simulation of the CMS detector. The result is that a signal of 5σ significance can be obtained with an integrated luminosity of 12–72 fb^-1 for Higgs boson masses in the range 130<m_H< 200 GeV. In addition, the major background can be measured directly to 7% from the data with an integrated luminosity of 30 fb^-1. We also suggest a method to determine the Higgs mass using template transverse mass distributions.