Discovery Potential for the SM Higgs Boson in the $H \to ZZ^{(*)} \to e^+ e^- e^+ e^-$ Decay Channel

A prospective analysis is presented for the discovery and for the mass and cross-section measurements of the Standard Model Higgs boson in the CMS experiment at the LHC collider. The analysis focuses on the p p --> H + X --> ZZ(*) + X --> e+e-e+e- + X channel for Higgs boson masses in the range from about 120 GeV/c^2 to about 300 GeV/c^2. It relies on a full simulation of the detector response and usage of new detailed electron reconstruction tools. Emphasis is put on realistic strategies for the evaluation of experimental systematics and control of physics background processes. For an integrated LHC luminosity of 30 fb^{-1}, a Standard Model Higgs boson would be observed in the e+e-e+e- channel with a significance above 3 standard deviations for masses m_H in the range from about 130 to 160 GeV/c^2 and above 180 GeV/c^2. A discovery with a significance above 5 standard deviations is possible for this integrated luminosity around m_H = 150 GeV/c^2 and in the range from about 190 to 300 GeV/c^2. The mass (cross-section) of the Higgs boson can be determined with a precision better than 0.5% (30%).