Search for standard model Higgs boson production in association with a W boson using a neural network discriminant at CDF

• Main Authors: Xie, Si (Contributor), Makhoul, K. (Contributor), Knuteson, Bruce O. (Contributor), Henderson, C. (Contributor), Hahn, Kristian Allan (Contributor), Goncharov, M. (Contributor), Gomez-Ceballos, Guillelmo (Contributor), Choudalakis, Georgios (Contributor), Bauer, Gerry P. (Contributor), Paus, Christoph M. E. (Contributor)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Laboratory for Nuclear Science (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Physical Society, 2010-03-01T16:23:24Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

We present a search for standard model Higgs boson production in association with a W boson in proton-antiproton collisions (pp̅→W[superscript ±]H→ℓνbb̅) at a center of mass energy of 1.96 TeV. The search employs data collected with the CDF II detector that correspond to an integrated luminosity of approximately 1.9  fb[superscript -1]. We select events consistent with a signature of a single charged lepton (e[superscript ±]/μ[superscript ±]), missing transverse energy, and two jets. Jets corresponding to bottom quarks are identified with a secondary vertex tagging method, a jet probability tagging method, and a neural network filter. We use kinematic information in an artificial neural network to improve discrimination between signal and background compared to previous analyses. The observed number of events and the neural network output distributions are consistent with the standard model background expectations, and we set 95% confidence level upper limits on the production cross section times branching fraction ranging from 1.2 to 1.1 pb or 7.5 to 102 times the standard model expectation for Higgs boson masses from 110 to 150  GeV/c[superscript 2], respectively.
Academy of Finland
Slovak R&D Agency
Programa Consolider-Ingenio 2010, Spain
Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Spain
Russian Foundation for Basic Research
Institut National de Physique Nucleaire et Physique des Particules/CNRS
Royal Society, United Kingdom
Science and Technology Facilities Council, United Kingdom
Korean Research Foundation
Korean Science and Engineering Foundation
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, Germany
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
Swiss National Science Foundation
National Science Council of the Republic of China
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan
Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare
National Science Foundation
United States Department of Energy