Search for $WH$ associated production in 5.3 fb$^{-1}$ of $p\bar{p}$ collisions at the Fermilab Tevatron

TL;DR

This paper reports a search for the associated production of Higgs and W bosons in proton-antiproton collisions at Fermilab, using multivariate analysis to set upper limits on the production rate relative to the Standard Model.

Contribution

First search at the Tevatron for WH production with H→bb̄ using advanced multivariate techniques and setting new upper limits on the cross section.

Findings

No significant excess observed over background.

Upper limit of 4.5 times the Standard Model prediction for m_H=115 GeV.

Expected limit of 4.8 times the Standard Model prediction.

Abstract

We present a search for associated production of Higgs and $W$ bosons in $p\bar{p}$ collisions at a center of mass energy of $\sqrt{s}=1.96$ TeV in 5.3 fb$^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity recorded by the D0 experiment. Multivariate analysis techniques are applied to events containing one lepton, an imbalance in transverse energy, and one or two $b$-tagged jets to discriminate a potential $WH$ signal from standard model backgrounds. We observe good agreement between data and background, and set an upper limit of 4.5(at 95% confidence level and for $m_H=115$ GeV) on the ratio of the $WH$ cross section multiplied by the branching fraction of $H \rightarrow b \bar{b}$ to its standard model prediction. A limit of 4.8 is expected from simulation.