Search for a Higgs Boson Decaying to Two W Bosons at CDF

TL;DR

This paper reports a search for the Higgs boson decaying into two W bosons using proton-antiproton collision data, setting upper limits on production cross sections without observing a significant signal.

Contribution

It provides the first limits on Higgs to WW decays at the Tevatron for masses between 110 and 200 GeV/c^2 using 3.0 fb-1 of data.

Findings

No evidence for Higgs production in the studied mass range.

Upper limits on cross section are close to Standard Model predictions at 160 GeV/c^2.

The most sensitive limit at 160 GeV/c^2 is 0.7 pb, about 1.7 times the SM cross section.

Abstract

We present a search for a Higgs boson decaying to two W bosons in ppbar collisions at sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV center-of-mass energy. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 3.0 fb-1 collected with the CDF II detector. We find no evidence for production of a Higgs boson with mass between 110 and 200 GeV/c^2, and determine upper limits on the production cross section. For the mass of 160 GeV/c^2, where the analysis is most sensitive, the observed (expected) limit is 0.7 pb (0.9 pb) at 95% Bayesian credibility level which is 1.7 (2.2) times the standard model cross section.