Distinguishing WH and Wbb production at the Fermilab Tevatron

The production of a Higgs boson in association with a {ital W} boson is the most likely process for the discovery of a light Higgs boson at the Fermilab Tevatron. Since it decays primarily to {ital b}-quark pairs, the principal background for this associated Higgs boson production process is Wb{bar b}, where the b{bar b} pair comes from the splitting of an off mass shell gluon. In this paper we investigate whether the spin angular correlations of the final state particles can be used to separate the Higgs signal from the Wb{bar b} background. We develop a general numerical technique which allows one to find a spin basis optimized according to a given criterion, and also give a new algorithm for reconstructing the {ital W} longitudinal momentum which is suitable for the WH and Wb{bar b} processes. {copyright} {ital 1999} {ital The American Physical Society}