Minijet veto: a tool for the heavy Higgs search at the LHC

The distinct color flow of the qq → qqH, H → W+W− process leads to suppressed radiation of soft gluons in the central region, a feature which is not shared by major background processes like tt production or qq → W+W−. For the leptonic decay of a heavy Higgs boson, H → W+W− → ℓ+νℓ−ν, it is shown that these backgrounds are typically accompanied by minijet emission in the 20–40 GeV range. A central minijet veto thus constitutes a powerful background rejection tool. It may be regarded as a rapidity gap trigger at the semihard parton level which should work even at high luminosities.