Higgs Boson Searches and the Hbbar Coupling at the LHeC

Abstract

Once the existence of the Higgs boson is established at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the focus will be shifted toward understanding its couplings to other particles. A crucial aspect is the measurement of the bottom Yukawa coupling, which is challenging at the LHC. In this paper we study the use of forward jet tagging as a means to secure the observation and to significantly improve the purity of the Higgs boson signal in the H to bbar decay mode from deep inelastic electron-proton scattering at the LHC. We demonstrate that the requirement of forward jet tagging in charged current events strongly enhances the signal-to-background ratio. The impact of a veto on additional partons is also discussed. Excellent response to hadronic shower and b-tagging capabilities are pivotal detector performance aspects.