Single-forward-jet tagging and central-jet vetoing to identify the leptonicWWdecay mode of a heavy Higgs boson

We study the extraction of the heavy-Higgs-boson signal $H\to W^{+}{W}^{-}\to \overline{\ell }\nu , \ell \overline{\nu }$ ($\ell =e or \mu$) from the standard-model background at hadron supercolliders. By tagging a single forward jet with energy $E_j>3\mathrm{}$ TeV and pseudorapidity $3<\left|{\eta }_j\right|<\mathrm{}5\mathrm{}$ and by vetoing central jets of transverse momenta $p_{\mathrm{Tj}}>60\mathrm{}$ GeV in the pseudorapidity range $0<\left|{\eta }_j\right|<\mathrm{}3\mathrm{}$, the QCD $\mathrm{WWj}$ and $t\overline{t}j\to \mathrm{WWb}\overline{b}j$ backgrounds are suppressed. For $m_H=1\mathrm{}$ TeV there are about 46 signal events from electroweak-vector-boson scattering (of which 36 events are of Higgs-boson origin) at the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) for an integrated luminosity of 10 ${\mathrm{fb}}^{-1\mathrm{}}$ and 10 other events from the $\mathrm{WWj}$ and $t\overline{t}j$ backgrounds for $m_t=140\mathrm{}$ GeV. The experimental separation of the vector-boson-scattering subprocess is thereby possible. At the CERN Large Hadron Collider, with an $E_j>2\mathrm{}$ TeV jet energy cut, all cross sections are about a factor of 10 below the SSC values.