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Title: Intermediate-mass Higgs boson and isosinglet neutral heavy lepton signals at hadron supercolliders

Miscellaneous ·
OSTI ID:5578002

The signals for the Standard Model intermediate-mass Higgs boson and isosinglet neutral heavy leptons at the forthcoming hadron supercolliders-the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) and the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC), are studied. The author studies inclusive production of the Standard Model Higgs boson in the intermediate-mass region (M[sub W] [approx lt] m[sub H] [approx lt] 2M[sub Z]) and its subsequent decay into two on- or off-shell W bosons that decay leptonically. Backgrounds from continuum W pair production and top quark pair production with semileptonic decays are investigated. The author concludes the Higgs boson signal may be observed via the decay H [yields] W*W* [yields] ([ell][bar v][sub [ell]]) ([bar [ell]][prime] v[prime][sub [ell]]) at the SSC for 145 GeV < m[sub H] [approx lt] 2M[sub Z] and at the LHC for 150 GeV < m[sub H] [approx lt] 2M[sub Z] if m[sub t] > 150 GeV. The author analyzes the search and discovery potential of isosinglet neutral heavy leptons (NHLs) produced via real or virtual W decay at pp supercolliders. The author considers the signal resulting from the leptonic decay of the NHL, and the two major backgrounds-continuum WZ, W[gamma] production and t[bar t]j production, where j is a hadronic jet. The decay patterns of NHL depend on its mass M[sub N], and different search strategies are needed for the two mass regions M[sub N] < M[sub W] and M[sub N] > M[sub Z]. The author finds for m[sub t] [ge] 150 (200) GeV the signal is observable for M[sub N] [le] 60 (70) GeV in the mass-region M[sub N] < M[sub W], and up to M[sub N] [approx equal] 110 GeV for M[sub N] > M[sub W], at both SSC and LHC. It is shown the non-observance of the signal (with a 4[sigma] statistical significance) in the region M[sub N] < M[sub W] could put upper limits on the NHL coupling constants that would be an improvement over the limits obtainable from the CERN Large Electron Positron Collider (LEP I).

Research Organization:
Wisconsin Univ., Madison, WI (United States)
OSTI ID:
5578002
Resource Relation:
Other Information: Thesis (Ph.D.)
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English