Finding the Leptonic WWWW Decay Mode of a Heavy Higgs Boson

We reanalyze the extraction of the heavy Higgs boson signal $H\rightarrow W^+W^-\rightarrow \bar\ell\nu,\ell\bar\nu$ $(\ell=e\hbox{ or }\mu)$ from the Standard Model background at hadron supercolliders, taking into account revised estimates of the top quark background. With new acceptance criteria the detection of the signal remains viable. Requiring a forward jet-tag, a central jet-veto, and a large relative transverse momentum of the two charged leptons yields $S/\sqrt B>6$ for one year of running at the SSC or LHC.Comment: LaTex(Revtex), 9 pages, 6 figures (available upon request), MAD/PH/75

H-->WW as the discovery mode for a light Higgs boson

The production cross section for a m_H=115 GeV, SM Higgs boson in weak boson fusion at the LHC is sizable. However, the branching fraction for H-->WW is expected to be relatively small. The signal, with its two forward jets, is sufficiently different from the main backgrounds that a signal to background ratio of better than 1:1 can nevertheless be obtained, with large enough rate to allow for a 5 sigma signal with 35 fb^{-1} of data. The H-->WW signal in weak boson fusion may thus prove to be the discovery mode for the Higgs boson at the LHC.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, uses revte

Searching for Stoponium along with the Higgs boson

Stoponium, a bound state of top squark and its antiparticle in a supersymmetric model, may be found in the ongoing Higgs searches at the LHC. Its WW and ZZ detection ratios relative to the Standard Model Higgs boson can be more than unity from WW* threshold to the two Higgs threshold. The gamma gamma channel is equally promising. Some regions of the stoponium mass below 150 GeV are already being probed by the ATLAS and CMS experiments.Comment: 10 pages 5 figure

Which long-baseline neutrino experiments are preferable?

We discuss the physics of superbeam upgrades, where we focus on T2KK, a NuMI beam line based experiment NOvA*, and a wide band beam (WBB) experiment independent of the NuMI beam line. For T2KK, we find that the Japan-Korea baseline helps resolve parameter degeneracies, but the improvement due to correlated systematics between the two detectors (using identical detectors) is only moderate. For an upgrade of NOvA with a liquid argon detector, we demonstrate that the Ash River site is preferred compared to alternatives, such as at the second oscillation maximum, and is the optimal site within the U.S. For a WBB experiment, we find that high proton energies and long decay tunnels are preferable. We compare water Cherenkov and liquid argon technologies, and find the break-even point in detector cost at about 4:1. In order to compare the physics potential of the different experimental configurations, we use the concept of exposure to normalize the performance. We find that experiments with WBBs are the best experimental concept. NOvA* could be competitive with sufficient luminosity. If $\sin^2 2\theta_{13}$ > 0.01, a WBB experiment can perform better than a neutrino factory.Comment: 31 pages, 13 figures, 5 tables. Version to appear in PR

Searching for a heavy Higgs boson via the H --> l nu jj decay mode at the CERN LHC

The discovery of a heavy Higgs boson with mass up to m_H = 1 TeV at the CERN LHC is possible in the H--> W^+W^- --> l nu jj decay mode. The weak boson scattering signal and backgrounds from t\bar tjj and from W+jets production are analyzed with parton level Monte Carlo programs which are built on full tree level amplitudes for all subprocesses. The use of double jet tagging and the reconstruction of the W invariant mass reduce the combined backgrounds to the same level as the Higgs signal. A central mini-jet veto, which distinguishes the different gluon radiation patterns of the hard processes, further improves the signal to background ratio to about 2.5:1, with a signal cross section of 1 fb. The jet energy asymmetry of the W --> jj decay will give a clear signature of the longitudinal polarization of the W's in the final event sample.Comment: 23 pages (with 7 embedded figures), Revtex, uses epsf.sty. Z-compressed postscript version also available at http://phenom.physics.wisc.edu/pub/preprints/1997/madph-97-1017.ps.Z or at ftp://phenom.physics.wisc.edu/pub/preprints/1997/madph-97-1017.ps.

Rise of Kp Total Cross Section and Universality

The increase of the measured hadronic total cross sections at the highest energies is empirically described by squared log of center-of-mass energy sqrt s as sigma(tot)= B (log s)2, consistent with the energy dependence of the Froissart unitarity bound. The coefficient B is argued to have a universal value, but this is not proved directly from QCD. In the previous tests of this universality, the p(pbar)p, pi p, and K p forward scatterings were analyzed independently and found to be consistent with B(pp) = B(pip) = B(Kp), although the determined value of B(Kp) had large uncertainty. In the present work, we have further analyzed forward Kp scattering to obtain a more exact value of B(Kp). Making use of continuous moment sum rules(CMSR) we have fully exploited the information of low-energy scattering data to predict the high-energy behavior of the amplitude hrough duality. The estimation of B(Kp) is improved remarkably, and our result strongly supports the universality of B.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure