Flavour Independent Search for Neutral Higgs Bosons at LEP.pdfVIP

EUROPEAN ORGANIZATION FOR NUCLEAR RESEARCH CERN-EP/2003-069 October 24, 2003 4 Flavour Independent Search for 0 Neutral Higgs Bosons at LEP 0 2 n a J 1 3 1 v 3 0 The L3 Collaboration 0 2 0 4 0 / x e - p e h Abstract : v i A flavour independent search for the CP-even and CP-odd neutral Higgs bosons X h and A is performed in 624 pb−1 of data collected with the L3 detector at LEP at r a centre-of-mass energies between 189 and 209 GeV. Higgs boson production through the e+e− → Zh and the e+e− → hA processes is considered and decays of the Higgs bosons into hadrons are studied. No significant signal is observed and 95% confidence level limits on the hZZ and hAZ couplings are derived as a function of the Higgs boson masses. Assuming the Standard Model cross section for the Higgs- strahlung process and a 100% branching fraction into hadrons, a 95% confidence level lower limit on the mass of the Higgs boson is set at 110.3 GeV. Submitted to Phys. Lett. B 1 Introduction One of the goals of the LEP program is the search for Higgs bosons, the particles postulated by the Standard Model of the electroweak interactions [1], and some of its extensions, to explain the mechanism [2] which gives the elementary particles their observed masses. At the centre-of-mass energies, √s, at which the LEP e+e−collider was operated, the Stan- dard Model Higgs boson, H, is predicted to decay dominantly into b quarks. For a large part of the parameter space of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard M