Standard Electroweak Interactions and Higgs Bosons

In the standard model, only one basic component remains to be found: the Higgs boson. The specifics of Higgs boson production and detection, with decay to t anti t and a particular t quark mass range in mind, have not been examined in detail. As such, the working group on Standard Electroweak Interactions and Higgs Bosons at this meeting decided to concentrate on Higgs boson production and detection at SSC energies in the particular case where the Higgs mass is in the range so as to make t anti t quark-antiquark pairs the dominant decay mode. The study of this case, that of the so-called intermediate mass Higgs, had already been launched in the Berkeley PSSC Workshop on Electroweak Symmetry Breaking, and was continued and extended here. The problems of t quark jet identification and detection efficiency and the manner of rejection of background (especially from b quark jets) with realistic detectors then occupied much of the attention of the group. The subject of making precise measurements of parameters in the standard model at SSC energies is briefly examined. Then we delve into the Higgs sector, with an introduction to the neutral Higgs of the standard model together with itsmore » production cross-sections in various processes and the corresponding potential backgrounds. A similar, though briefer, discussion for a charged Higgs boson (outside the Standard Model) follows. The heart of the work on identifying and reconstructing the t and then the Higgs boson in the face of backgrounds is discussed. The problems with semileptonic decays, low energy jet fragments, mass resolution, and b-t discrimination all come to the fore. We have tried to make a serious step here towards a realistic assessment of the problems entailed in pulling a signal out of the background, including a rough simulation of calorimeter-detector properties. 25 references.« less