Comparative study of the benefits of forward jet tagging in heavy-Higgs-boson production at the Superconducting Super Collider

The event rate for production of a Higgs boson of mass ∼1 TeV with decay $H\to \mathrm{ZZ}\to 4$ charged leptons is of order 25 events per year at standard Superconducting Super Collider luminosity and the QCD background is of comparable size. By tagging a single forward jet of energy $E_j>1\mathrm{}$ TeV and rapidity $2<\left|{\eta }_j\right|<\mathrm{}5\mathrm{}$ from the $\mathrm{qq}\to \mathrm{qqZZ}$ process, the QCD background can be essentially eliminated, with about 10 Higgs-boson signal events per year remaining, which amounts to 70% of the $\mathrm{qq}\to \mathrm{qqZZ}$ signal rate. The experimental separation of the vector-boson scattering subprocess is thereby possible.