Minijet veto : a tool for the heavy Higgs search at the LHCV

The distinct color ow of the qq ! qqH; H ! W + W ? process leads to suppressed radiation of soft gluons in the central region, a feature which is not shared by major background processes like t t production or q q ! W + W ?. For the leptonic decay of a heavy , it is shown that these backgrounds are typically accompanied by minijet emission in the 20{40 GeV range. A central minijet veto thus constitutes a powerful background rejection tool. It may be regarded as a rapidity gap trigger at the semihard parton level which should work even at high luminosities.