Title: Search for the Standard Model Higgs boson produced by vector boson fusion and decaying to bottom quarks
Abstract: The search for the Standard Model (SM) Higgs boson (H) produced through the Vector Boson Fusion (VBF) mechanism and decaying to a pair of bottom quarks is reported. The used data have been collected with the CMS detector and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 19.8 fb$^{-1}$ of proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=8$ TeV at the CERN LHC. Parked data have been exploited as well. This search resulted in an observed (expected) significance in these data samples for a H $\rightarrow$ b$\bar{b}$ signal at a mass of 125 GeV of 2.2 (0.8) standard deviations. The cited signal strength, $μ=σ/σ_{\textrm{SM}}$, was measured to be 2.8$^{+1.6}_{-1.4}$. This result has been combined with other CMS searches for the SM Higgs boson decaying in a pair of bottom quarks exploiting other Higgs production mechanisms. The obtained combined signal strength is 1.0 $\pm$ 0.4, corresponding to an observed signal significance of 2.6 standard deviations for a Higgs boson mass of 125 GeV.