Associated Production of Higgs and Weak Bosons, with H -> b\bar b, at Hadron Colliders

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the viability of discovering an intermediate-mass Higgs via associated production with W or Z, followed by H→bb, at the Tevatron, a 3.5 TeV Tevatron upgrade, and the LHC. Through detailed signal–background studies, detector acceptance, and b-tagging considerations, it demonstrates that 5σ evidence is achievable up to roughly 95–100 GeV with 30 fb⁻¹ and up to 120–125 GeV with 100 fb⁻¹, across the three machines. It also extends the analysis to the MSSM, showing that the light h with enhanced hb̄b coupling can be observable in regions of mA–tanβ not accessible via h→γγ at LEP II or the LHC, potentially filling gaps in Higgs coverage. Overall, the work argues that WH/ZH with H→bb is a valuable complementary channel for probing the Higgs sector at hadron colliders and motivates further experimental study.

Abstract

We consider the search for the Higgs boson at a high-luminosity Fermilab Tevatron, an upgraded Tevatron of energy 3.5 TeV, and the CERN Large Hadron Collider, via $WH/ZH$ production followed by H -> bb~ and leptonic decay of the weak vector bosons. We show that each of these colliders can potentially observe the standard Higgs boson in the intermediate-mass range, 80 GeV <m_H < 120 GeV. This mode complements the search for and the study of the intermediate-mass Higgs boson via H -> γγat the LHC. In addition, it can potentially be used to observe the lightest Higgs scalar of the minimal supersymmetric model in a region of parameter space not accessible to CERN LEP II or the LHC (using h -> γγ,ZZ^*).