Abstract
We study the gluon fusion into pairs of off-shellZ bosons and their subsequent decay into charged lepton pairs at hadron colliders:gg→ZZ→4l ± (l ±: charged lepton). Throughout this paper we do not restrict the intermediate stateZ bosons to the narrow width approximation but allow for arbitrary invariant masses. We compare the strength of this process with the known leading order results for\(q\bar q \to ZZ \to 4\ell ^ \pm\) and forgg→H→ZZ→4l ± At LHC energies (\(\sqrt s\)=14 TeV) the contribution from the gluon fusion background is around 20% of the contribution from quark-antiquark annihilation. These two processes do not form a severe irreducible background to the Higgs signal. At Higgs masses below 120 GeV the final state interference for the decay channelH→ZZ→4μ± is increasingly constructive. This has no effect on the Higgs search as in this mass region the signal remains too small. One can extend the intermediate mass Higgs search via off-shellZ boson pairs at the LHC down to about 130 GeV Higgs mass. However a careful study of the reducible background is needed for definitive conclusions.
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