Heavy-Higgs-boson decays to W+W-Z in the standard model

Parity conservation forbids the standard model Higgs boson H from decaying to three longitudinally polarized gauge bosons (W+W-Z) at tree level to leading order in (MHMW)2. As a result, the decay HW+W-Z is dominated by states with two longitudinal and one transverse gauge bosons for a range of (heavy) Higgs-boson masses. An approximate analytic result that shows this important feature is derived, and the full lowest-order calculation is carried out for all Higgs masses of practical interest. The branching ratio is about 1% for MH1 TeV. With an integrated luminosity of 1040 cm2, the number of events can be as large as 600 at the Superconducting Super Collider, depending on the Higgs-boson mass. The connection of these results to the equivalence theorem is also discussed.