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→W⁺W^-→ν, ν (=e or μ) from the standard-model background at hadron supercolliders. By tagging a single forward jet with energy Eⱼ>3 TeV and pseudorapidity 3<|ηⱼ|<5 and by vetoing central jets of transverse momenta pTj>60 GeV in the pseudorapidity range 0<|ηⱼ|<3, the QCD WWj and tt̄j→WWbb̄j backgrounds are suppressed. For mH=1 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 fb^-1 and 10 other events from the WWj and tt̄j backgrounds for mₜ=140 GeV. The experimental separation of the vector-boson-scattering subprocess is thereby possible. At the CERN Large Hadron Collider, with an Eⱼ>2 TeV jet energy cut, all cross sections are about a factor of 10 below the SSC values.