The theoretical foundations of the Standard Model of elementary particles relies on the existence of the Higgs boson, a particle which has been revealed for the first time by the experiments run at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2012. As the Higgs boson is an unstable particle, its search strategies were based on its decay products. In this thesis, Francesco Pandolfi conducted a search for the Higgs boson in the H → ZZ → l + l - qq Decay Channel with 4.6 fb -1 of 7 TeV proton-proton collision data collected by the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment. The presence of jets in the final state poses a series of challenges to the experimenter: both from a technical point of view, as jets are complex objects and necessitate of ad-hoc reconstruction techniques, and from an analytical one, as backgrounds with jets are copious at hadron colliders, therefore analyses must obtain high degrees of background rejection in order to achieve competitive sensitivity. This is accomplished by following two directives: the use of an angular likelihood discriminant, capable of discriminating events likely to originate from the decay of a scalar boson from non-resonant backgrounds, and by using jet parton flavor tagging, selecting jets compatible with quark hadronization and discarding jets more likely to be initiated by gluons. The events passing the selection requirements in 4.6 fb -1 of data collected by the CMS detector are examined, in the search of a possible signal compatible with the decay of a heavy Higgs boson. The thesis describes the statistical tools and the results of this analysis. This work is a paradigm for studies of the Higgs boson with final states with jets. The non-expert physicists will enjoy a complete and eminently readable description of a proton-proton collider analysis. At the same time, the expert reader will learn the details of the searches done with jets at CMS.

A search for neutral Higgs bosons predicted in the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) for [mu]+[mu]- decay channels is presented. Our analysis uses data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC in proton-proton collisions at centre-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV, corresponding to integrated luminosities of 5.1 and 19.3 fb-1, respectively. The search is sensitive to Higgs bosons produced either through the gluon fusion process or in association with a bb quark pair. No statistically significant excess is observed in the [mu]+[mu]- mass spectrum. Results are interpreted in the framework of several benchmark scenarios, and the data are used to set an upper limit on the MSSM parameter tan [beta] as a function of the mass of the pseudoscalar A boson in the range from 115 to 300 GeV. Furthermore, the model independent upper limits are given for the product of the cross section and branching fraction for gluon fusion and b quark associated production at √s = 8 TeV. As a result, they are the most stringent limits obtained to date in this channel.

A search for the standard model Higgs boson (H) decaying to b b-bar when produced in association with a weak vector boson (V) is reported for the following channels: W(mu nu)H, W(e nu)H, W(tau nu)H, Z(mu mu)H, Z(e e)H, and Z(nu nu)H. The search is performed in data samples corresponding to integrated luminosities of up to 5.1 inverse femtobarns at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV and up to 18.9 inverse femtobarns at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV, recorded by the CMS experiment at the LHC. An excess of events is observed above the expected background with a local significance of 2.1 standard deviations for a Higgs boson mass of 125 GeV, consistent with the expectation from the production of the standard model Higgs boson. The signal strength corresponding to this excess, relative to that of the standard model Higgs boson, is 1.0 +/- 0.5./abstract