Searching for VV -> H -> tau tau at the CERN LHC

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential to detect Higgs bosons decaying into tau pairs via weak boson fusion at the LHC, demonstrating promising discovery prospects for both Standard Model and MSSM scenarios.

Contribution

It provides a detailed Monte Carlo analysis showing the feasibility of observing Higgs to tau tau decays and measuring the H-tau-tau coupling at the LHC.

Findings

Standard Model Higgs detectable with ~30 fb^-1 luminosity

Significant MSSM Higgs signals across parameter space

Direct measurement of H-tau-tau coupling achievable

Abstract

The production of a neutral, CP even Higgs via weak boson fusion and decay H -> tau tau at the LHC is studied for the Standard Model and MSSM, utilizing a parton level Monte Carlo analysis. This channel allows a 5 sigma observation of a Standard Model Higgs with an integrated luminosity of about 30 fb^-1, and provides a direct measurement of the H-tau-tau coupling. For the MSSM case, a highly significant signal for at least one of the Higgs bosons with reasonable luminosity is possible over the entire physical parameter space which will be left unexplored by LEP2.