The potential for the discovery of a Standard Model Higgs boson in the mass range mH < 2mZ in the vector boson fusion mode has been studied for the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. The characteristic signatures of additional jets in the forward regions of the detector and of low jet activity in the central region allow for an efficient background rejection. Analyses for the H → W W ( * ) and H → τ τ decay modes have been performed using a realistic simulation of the expected detector performance. The results obtained demonstrate the large discovery potential in the H → W W ( * ) decay channel and the sensitivity to Higgs boson decays into τ -pairs in the low-mass region around 120 GeV/c 2 .

Takashi Furumura I Shunsuke Takemura I Shinako Noguchi I Teito Takemoto I Takuto Maeda I Kazuhisa Iwai I Simanchal Padhy Strong ground motions from the 2011 off-the Pacific-Coast-of-Tohoku, Japan (Mw=9.0) earthquake obtained from a dense nationwide seismic network Abstract The dense recordings of the K-NET and KiK-net nationwide strong motion network of 1,189 accelerometers show clearly the radiation and propagation properties of the strong ground motions associated with the 2011 off-the-Pacific Coast-ofTohoku, Japan (Mw=9.0) earthquake. The snapshots of seismic wave propagation reveal strong ground motions from this earthquake that originate from three large slips; the first two slips occurred over the plate interface of off-Miyagi at the southwest and the east of the hypocenter, and the third one just beneath the northern end of Ibaraki over the plate interface or in the crust. Such multiple shocks of this event caused large accelerations (maximum 1-2G) and prolonged ground shaking lasting several minutes with dominant high-frequency (T<1s) signals over the entire area of northern Japan. On the other hand, ground motions of relatively longer-period band (T=1-2s), which caused significant damage to wooden-frame houses, were about 1/2-1/3 of those observed near the source area of the destructive 1995 Kobe, Japan (M=7.3) earthquake. Also, the long-period (T=6-8s) ground motion in the Kanto (Tokyo) sedimentary basin was at an almost comparable level of those observed during the recent Mw=7 inland earthquakes, but not as large as that from the former M=8 earthquakes. Therefore, the impact of the strong ground motion from the present M=9 earthquake was not as large as expected from the previously M=7-8 earthquakes and caused strong motion damage only to short-scale construction and according to instruments inside the buildings, both have a shorter (T<1s) natural period.

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