Search for the Standard Model Higgs boson produced in association with a vector boson and decaying to a b-quark pair using up to 4.7 fb−1 of pp collision data at √s = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

This paper presents the results of an ATLAS direct search for a Standard Model Higgs boson of mass 110 < mH < 130 GeV produced in association with a W or Z boson and decaying to bb ̄. Three decay channels were considered: ZH → l+l−bb ̄ , WH → lνbb ̄ and ZH → νν ̄bb ̄ , where l corresponds to an electron or a muon. No evidence for Higgs boson production is observed in a dataset of 7 TeV pp collisions corresponding to 4.7 fb−1 of integrated luminosity from the LHC in 2011. Upper limits on Higgs boson production, at the 95% confidence level, of 2.7 to 5.3 times the Standard Model cross section were obtained in the mass range between 110 and 130 GeV. The expected exclusion limits range between 2.6 and 5.1 for the same mass interval.