Searches for neutral Higgs bosons in e+e- collisions at centre-of-mass energies from 192 to 202GeV

TL;DR

This paper reports on searches for neutral Higgs bosons at LEP energies, setting lower mass limits for the Standard Model and MSSM Higgs bosons, with no evidence of signal found.

Contribution

First to analyze LEP data from 192 to 202 GeV for neutral Higgs bosons within the Standard Model and MSSM, establishing new lower mass bounds.

Findings

Standard Model Higgs mass > 107.7 GeV/c2

MSSM Higgs bosons h and A > 91.2 and 91.6 GeV/c2

Invisibly decaying Higgs bosons < 106.4 GeV/c2 excluded

Abstract

Searches for neutral Higgs bosons are performed with the 237 pb-1 of data collected in 1999 by the ALEPH detector at LEP, for centre-of-mass energies between 191.6 and 201.6 GeV. These searches apply to Higgs bosons within the context of the Standard Model and its minimal supersymmetric extension (MSSM) as well as to invisibly decaying Higgs bosons. No evidence of a signal is seen. A lower limit on the mass of the Standard Model Higgs boson of 107.7 GeV/c2 at 95% confidence level is set. In the MSSM, lower limits of 91.2 and 91.6 GeV/c2 are derived for the masses of the neutral Higgs bosons h and A, respectively. For a Higgs boson decaying invisibly and produced with the Standard Model cross section, masses below 106.4 GeV/c2 are excluded.