Search for the standard model H boson decaying to tau leptons and produced in association with a vector boson at CMS

A search for the standard model (SM) H boson decaying to a pair of tau leptons and produced in association with a W or Z boson is presented using data collected in 2011 and 2012 with the CMS detector at the LHC. The topologies studied here represent three-or four-charged lepton final states, where the SM H boson is produced in association with the leptonic decay of a W or Z boson, respectively. The analyses use CMS collision data samples corresponding to integrated luminosities of 4.9 fb(-1) collected at a centre-of-mass energy of 7TeV and 19.7 fb(-1) at 8TeV. No significant excess above the expected background is observed, resulting in exclusion limits between 0.96 and 8.9 times the expectation for the product of SM H cross section and tau pair decay branching fraction for H masses between 90 and 145 GeV. The best fit of the observed H -> tau tau signal cross section in associated production times branching fraction for mH = 125GeV is -0.33 +/- 1.02 times the SM expectation.