Boson Fusion and Higgs production at the LHC in six fermion final states with one charged lepton pair

Abstract

Boson boson scattering and Higgs production in boson boson fusion will be actively investigated at the LHC. We have performed a parton level study of all processes of the type $q_1 q_2 \to q_3 q_4 q_5 q_6 l^+l^-$ using for the first time a full fledged six fermion Monte Carlo event generator which employs exact matrix elements at $\O(\alpha_{em}^6)$. We have examined Higgs production in vector boson fusion followed by the decay chain $H\to ZZ\to l^+l^-jj$, including exactly all electroweak irreducible backgrounds. In the high mass region we have compared the case of a relatively light Higgs with the no-Higgs case. The integrated cross section for the latter case is more than twice that in the former for a minimum invariant mass of the $ZV$ pair of about 800 \GeV. We find, in a preliminary anlysis at parton level that, summing up the muon and the electron channels, about 30 events are expected in the light Higgs case for L=100 $fb^{-1}$.