Search for the Standard Model Higgs boson produced by vector boson fusion and decaying to bottom quarks

Abstract

The search for the Standard Model (SM) Higgs boson (H) produced through the Vector Boson Fusion (VBF) mechanism and decaying to a pair of bottom quarks is reported. The used data have been collected with the CMS detector and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 19.8 fb$^{-1}$ of proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=8$ TeV at the CERN LHC. Parked data have been exploited as well. This search resulted in an observed (expected) significance in these data samples for a H $\rightarrow$ b$\bar{{b}}$ signal at a mass of 125 GeV of 2.2 (0.8) standard deviations. The cited signal strength, $\mu=\sigma/\sigma_{\textrm{SM}}$, was measured to be 2.8$^{+1.6}_{-1.4}$. This result has been combined with other CMS searches for the SM Higgs boson decaying in a pair of bottom quarks exploiting other Higgs production mechanisms. The obtained combined signal strength is 1.0 $\pm$ 0.4, corresponding to an observed signal significance of 2.6 standard deviations for a Higgs boson mass of 125 GeV.