Finding the Leptonic $WW$ Decay Mode of a Heavy Higgs Boson

Abstract

We reanalyze the extraction of the heavy Higgs boson signal $H\to W^{+}{W}^{-}\to \bar{\ell }\hat{I}½,\ell \bar{\hat{I}}½$ $(\ell =eor\hat{I}¼)$ from the Standard Model background at hadron supercolliders, taking into account revised estimates of the top quark background. With new acceptance criteria the detection of the signal remains viable. Requiring a forward jet-tag, a central jet-veto, and a large relative transverse momentum of the two charged leptons yields $S/\sqrt{B}>6$ for one year of running at the SSC or LHC.

LaTex(Revtex), 9 pages, 6 figures (available upon request), MAD/PH/757