Search for a Higgs boson produced in association with a Z boson in pp¯ collisions

We describe a search for the Standard Model Higgs boson with a mass of 105 GeV/c2 to 145 GeV/c2 in data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of approximately 450 pb−1 collected with the DØ detector at the Fermilab Tevatron pp¯ collider at a center-of-mass energy of 1.96 TeV. The Higgs boson is required to be produced in association with a Z boson, and the Z boson is required to decay to either electrons or muons with the Higgs boson decaying to a bb¯ pair. The data are well described by the expected background, leading to 95% confidence level cross section upper limits σ(pp¯→ZH)×B(H→bb¯) in the range of 3.1 pb to 4.4 pb.