Weak boson fusion is a copious source of intermediate mass Higgs bosons at the LHC. The additional very energetic forward jets in these events provide for powerful background suppression tools. We analyze the $\overrightarrow{H}\tau \tau$ decay mode for the standard model Higgs boson. A parton level analysis of the dominant physics backgrounds (mainly $\overrightarrow{Z}\tau \tau$ and Drell-Yan production of τ’s) and of reducible backgrounds (from $W+\mathrm{jet}$ and $b\overline{b}$ production in association with two jets and subsequent leptonic decays) demonstrates that this channel allows the observation of $\overrightarrow{H}\tau \tau$ in a low background environment, yielding a significant Higgs signal with an integrated luminosity of about $30{\mathrm{fb}}^{\mathrm{-}1}.$ The weak boson fusion process thus allows direct measurement of the $H\tau \tau$ coupling.

• Received 31 August 1998

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.59.014037