Prospects for the Observation of a Higgs Boson with $H\to\tau^+\tau^-\to l^+l^-\sla{p_t}$ Associated with One Jet at the LHC

Abstract

The sensitivity of the LHC experiments to the Standard Model Higgs using $H\to\tau\tau\to l^+l^-\sla{p_t}$ associated with one high $P_T$ jet in the mass range $110 <M_H<150 \gev$/c$^2$ is investigated. A cut and Neural Network based event selections are chosen to optimize the expected signal significance with this decay mode. A signal significance of about $6.6 \sigma$ can be achieved for $M_H=120 \gev$/c$^2$ with $30 $fb$^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity for one experiment only. With this approach, experimental issues related to tagging forward jets and to the application of a central jet veto are simplified considerably.