Search for the Standard Model Higgs Boson in the Two-Electron and Two-Muon Final State with CMS

The decay of the Standard Model Higgs boson to ZZ(*), with both Zs decaying to leptons is one of the most important potential discovery channels for the Higgs boson at the LHC. The four lepton state with the highest branching ratio is the two-electron two-muon final state. This note presents the discovery potential of the Higgs boson using this channel at CMS for Higgs boson masses between 115 and 600 GeV. It is found that a Higgs boson with mass in the range 130 to 500 GeV, excluding a narrow region close to 170 GeV is expected to be observable at CMS with a significance exceeding 5 sigma with 30 fb^-1 of integrated luminosity.