Finding Higgs bosons heavier than 2 mW in dileptonic W-boson decays

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We reconsider observables for discovering a heavy Higgs boson (with mₕ > 2mW) via its di-leptonic decays h -> WW -> l nu l nu. We show that observables generalizing the transverse mass that take into account the fact that both of the intermediate W bosons are likely to be on-shell give a significant improvement over the variables used in existing searches. We also comment on the application of these observables to other decays which proceed via narrow-width intermediates.