Search for the Standard Model Higgs Boson Produced in Association with a Vector Boson and Decaying to Bottom Quarks at the CMS Detector

A search for the Standard Model Higgs boson produced in association with a W or Z boson and decaying to bottom quarks is presented. A sample of approximately 24 fb$^{−1}$ of data recorded by the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, operating at center-of-mass energies of 7 TeV and 8 TeV in 2011 and 2012, respectively, is used to search for events consistent with the signature of two b jets recoiling with high momentum from a W($\ell \nu$), W($\tau \nu$), Z($\ell \ell$), or Z($\nu \nu$) decay, where $\ell$ refers to either an electron or a muon. One-prong hadronic decays of the tau particle are selected for in the case of W($\tau \nu$). Observed signal significance and 95% confidence level upper limits on the production cross section times $H \to b \bar{b}$ branching fraction, relative to the Standard Model prediction, are presented for the 110-135 GeV Higgs mass range.