Search for the Higgs through the decay channel H →

1 Abstract According to the Standard Model of Particle Physics, all particles are necessarily mass-less. Obviously this is not the case. One attempt at reconciling the Standard Model's prediction with observed particle masses is the proposal that particles acquire mass through the interaction with a field that pervades all of space; the stronger the interaction, the greater the acquired mass. The particle associated with this field, the Higgs boson, has yet to be discovered. We present here methods and results in a search for the Higgs in the 150-200 GeV mass range. Using the Tevatron, a particle accelerator at Fermilab, we investigate the particles produced for evidence of the Higgs by means of its decay products. I have used two analysis packages to study the accelerator data. The program toolkit for multivariate analysis uses multivariate techniques including Neural Networks and Boosted Decision Trees to separate Higgs-like signals from background data. The program called Collie produces, among other things, a lower exclusion limit on the cross section of Higgs production at a certain mass.