Distinguishing WH and Wb(b)over-bar production at the Fermilab Tevatron - art. no. 093003

The production of a Higgs boson in association with a W boson is the most l ikely process for the discovery of a light Higgs boson at the Fermilab Teva tron. Since it decays primarily to b-quark pairs, the principal background for this associated Higgs boson production process is Wb(b) over bar, where the <b(b)over bar> pair comes from the splitting of an off mass shell gluo n. In this paper we investigate whether the spin angular correlations of th e final state particles can be used to separate the Higgs signal from the W b(b) over bar background. We develop a general numerical technique which al lows one to find a spin basis optimized according to a given criterion, and also give a new algorithm for reconstructing the W longitudinal momentum w hich is suitable for the WH and Wb(b) over bar processes. [S0556-2821(99)07 019-8].