Search for the Higgs Boson Decaying to Two Tau Leptons in Proton-Antiproton Collisions at a Center of Mass Energy of 1.96 TeV

Abstract

A search for the Higgs boson decaying to tau tau using 7.8 fb^-1 of pp collisions at 1.96 TeV collected with CDF II detector is presented. The search is sensitive to four production mechanisms of the Higgs boson: ggH, WH, ZH and VBF. Modes where one tau decay leptonically, and another decay, hadronically, are considered. Two novel techniques are developed and used in the search. A Probabilistic Particle Flow Algorithm is used for energy measurements of the hadronic tau candidates. The signal is discriminated from backgrounds by the Missing Mass Calculator, which allows for full invariant mass reconstruction of tau tau pair. The data are found to be consistent with the background only hypothesis. Therefore a 95% confidence level upper limit on the Standard Model Higgs boson cross section was set. At M_H=120 GeV/c^2 observed limit is 14.9 x sigma_SM x Br(H -> tau tau).