Higgs boson discovery potential of LHC in the channel pp→γγ+jet

We discuss the SM Higgs discovery potential of LHC in the reaction pp --> H + jet --> gamma gamma + jet when the jet is observed at sufficiently high E-t to be reliably identified. We conclude that this channel gives promising discovery possibilities for the Higgs boson mass range 100-140 GeV, during LHC operation at a low luminosity. With 30 fb(-1) of accumulated data and for M-H = 120 GeV about 100 signal events could be observed with the number of background events larger by a factor of 2 only, showing a signal significance S/root B similar to 7. We use the difference of distributions in the partonic subprocess energy root (s) over cap for the signal and background for a better separation of the signal. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.