Flavour Independent Searches for Hadronically Decaying Neutral Higgs Bosons

Abstract

This paper describes flavour independent searches for hadronically decaying neutral Higgs bosons in the data collected by the DELPHI experiment at LEP, at centre-of-mass energies between 189 and 209 GeV. The collected data-set corresponds to an integrated luminosity of around 610 pb^{-1}. The e+e- -> hA and e+e- -> hZ processes are considered, with direct Higgs boson decays into hadrons. No evidence for Higgs boson production is found, and cross-section limits are set as a function of the Higgs boson masses. No explicit assumptions are made on the underlying physics beyond the Standard Model, allowing interpretation of the data in a large class of models.

26 pages, 10 figures