Search for Higgs decaying to WW at CMS

A search for a standard model Higgs boson decaying into a W +W- pair is presented, using CMS proton-proton collision data samples both at 7 TeV and 8 TeV center-of-mass energy, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.9 ± 0.2 fb-1 and 12.1 ± 0.5 fb-1 respectively. Both fully-leptonic and semi-leptonic W decay final states are considered. Upper limits are set on the Higgs boson production relative to the standard model expectation. The standard model Higgs boson is excluded at 95% confidence level in the mass ranges [128-600] GeV and [215-490] + [525-600] GeV using the fully-leptonic and semi-leptonic channels respectively. In the fully-leptonic final state, an excess of events is observed above background which is consistent with the expectations from a standard model Higgs boson of mass 125 GeV and has a statistical significance of 3.1 standard deviations. © 2013 IOP Publishing Ltd.