Search for $ZH$ Production at D0 in $p\bar{p}\to\ell^+\ell^-b\bar{b}$ Events at $\sqrt{s}=1.96$ TeV

TL;DR

This paper reports a search for low-mass Higgs bosons produced with a Z boson at the Fermilab Tevatron, using data with leptons and b-tagged jets, with improved sensitivity techniques.

Contribution

It introduces enhanced methods for lepton acceptance and signal-to-background discrimination in Higgs searches at the Tevatron.

Findings

No significant Higgs signal observed

Improved sensitivity over previous searches

Constraints on Higgs production cross-section

Abstract

We present a search for a low-mass standard model Higgs boson produced in association with a $Z$ boson decaying to charged leptons at a center-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}=$1.96 TeV with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. The search is performed in a large data set of events containing two opposite-sign leptons (electron, muon, tau) and one or two b-tagged jets. Recent improvements to the sensitivity, from increased lepton acceptance to optimized signal-to-background discrimination, will be discussed.