Enhancing the heavy Higgs signal with jet-jet profile cuts

Abstract

The jet-jet profile, or detailed manner, in which transverse energy and mass are distributed around the jet-jet system resulting from the hadronic decay of a $Z$ boson in the process Higgs$\to ZZ$ at a proton-proton collider energy of $40\text{tev}$ is carefully examined. Two observables are defined that can be used to help distinguish the ${\ell }^{+}{\ell }^{-}$-jet-jet signal from Higgs decay from the ``ordinary'' QCD background arising from the large transverse momentum production of single $Z$ bosons plus the associated jets. By making cuts on these observables, signal to background enhancement factors greater than $100$ can be obtained.

Comments: 16 pages, Univ. Florida IFT-93-3