Search for the Standard Model Higgs boson produced in association with a vector boson and decaying to a b-quark pair with the ATLAS detector

Abstract

This Letter presents the results of a direct search with the ATLAS detector at the LHC for a Standard Model Higgs boson of mass 110 < m(H) < 130 GeV produced in association with a W or Z boson and decaying to bb. Three decay channels are considered: ZH->llbb, WH->lvbb, and ZH->vvbb, where l corresponds to an electron or a muon. No evidence for Higgs boson production is observed in a dataset of 7 TeV pp collisions corresponding to 4.7/fb of integrated luminosity collected by ATLAS in 2011. Exclusion limits on Higgs boson production, at the 95% confidence level, of 2.5 to 5.5 times the Standard Model cross section are obtained in the mass range 110 - 130 GeV. The expected exclusion limits range between 2.5 and 4.9 for the same mass interval.

15 pages plus author list (30 pages total), 5 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Physics Letters B. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HIGG-2012-08/