We study the inclusive production at future hadron supercolliders of the standard-model Higgs boson in the intermediate-mass region ($M_W\lesssim M_H\lesssim 2M_Z$) and its subsequent decay into two virtual $W$ bosons that decay leptonically. Backgrounds from continuum $W$ pair production and from topquark pair production with semileptonic decays are investigated. We conclude that the Higgsboson signal may be observed via the decay $H\to W^{*}{W}^{*}\to \left(l{\overline{\nu }}_l\right)\left({\overline{l}}^{\prime }{\nu }_{l^{\prime }}\right)$ at the Superconducting Super Collider for $145 \mathrm{GeV}<M_H\lesssim 2M_Z$ if $m_t>150\mathrm{}$ GeV. Here $W^{*}$ denotes an on- or off-shell $W$ boson.

• Received 20 August 1990

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.43.779