How to find a Higgs boson with a mass between 155 and 180 GeV at the CERN LHC

We reconsider the signature of events with two charged leptons and missing energy as a signal for the detection of the standard model Higgs boson in the mass region $M\left(\mathrm{Higgs}\right)$=155–180 GeV. It is shown that a few simple experimental criteria allow us to distinguish events originating from the Higgs boson decaying to $H\to W^{+}{W}^{-}$ from the nonresonant production of $W^{+}{W}^{-}X$ at the CERN LHC. With this set of cuts, signal to background ratios of about one to one are obtained, allowing a 5–10$\sigma$ detection with about 5 ${\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ of luminosity. This corresponds to less than one year of running at the initial lower luminosity $\mathcal{L}{=10\mathrm{}}^{33}\hspace{0.5em}{\mathrm{cm}}^{-2}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$. This is significantly better than for the hitherto considered Higgs boson detection mode $H\to Z^0{Z}^{0*}\to 2{\mathcal{l}}^{+}2{\mathcal{l}}^{-}$, where in this mass range about 100 ${\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity are required for a $5\sigma$ signal.