Search for a Higgs boson produced in association with a $Z$ boson in $p arp$ collisions

Abstract

We describe a search for the standard model Higgs boson with a mass of 105 GeV/c^2 to 145 GeV/c^2 in data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of approximately 450 pb^{-1} collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron ppbar collider at a center-of-mass energy of 1.96 TeV. The Higgs boson is required to be produced in association with a Z boson, and the Z boson is required to decay to either electrons or muons with the Higgs boson decaying to a bbbar pair. The data are well described by the expected background, leading to 95% confidence level cross section upper limits sigma(ppbarto ZH)x B(Htobbbar) in the range of 3.1 pb to 4.4 pb.