Distinguishing WH and WBBbar production at the Fermilab Tevatron

TL;DR

This paper explores how spin angular correlations can distinguish Higgs production with a W boson from WBBbar background at the Fermilab Tevatron, introducing a new numerical technique and reconstruction algorithm.

Contribution

It develops a numerical method to optimize spin basis selection and a new algorithm for reconstructing W longitudinal momentum for better signal-background separation.

Findings

Spin correlations can effectively differentiate Higgs signal from background.

The new algorithms improve the reconstruction accuracy of W boson momentum.

Optimized spin bases enhance the detection prospects of the Higgs boson.

Abstract

The production of a Higgs boson in association with a W-boson is the most likely process for the discovery of a light Higgs at the Fermilab Tevatron. Since it decays primarily to b-quark pairs, the principal background for this associated Higgs production process is WBBbar, where the BBbar pair comes from the splitting of an off mass shell gluon. In this paper we investigate whether the spin angular correlations of the final state particles can be used to separate the Higgs signal from the WBBbar background. We develop a general numerical technique which allows one to find a spin basis optimized according to a given criterion, and also give a new algorithm for reconstructing the W longitudinal momentum which is suitable for the WH and WBBbar processes.