I present a search for the standard model Higgs boson, H, produced in association with a W boson in data events containing a charged lepton (electron or muon), missing energy, and two or three jets. The data analysed correspond to 9.7 fb-1 of integrated luminosity collected at a center-of-momentum energy of sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron ppbar collider. This search uses algorithms to identify the signature of bottom quark production and multivariate techniques to improve the purity of H&rarr bbbar production. We validate our methodology by measuring WZ and ZZ production with Z&rarr bbbar and find production rates consistent with the standard model prediction. For a Higgs boson mass of 125 GeV, we determine a 95% C.L. upper limit on the production of a standard model Higgs boson of 4.8 times the standard model Higgs boson production cross section, while the expected limit is 4.7 times the standard model production cross section. I also present a novel method for improving the energy resolution for charged particles within hadronic signatures. This is achieved by replacing the calorimeter energy measurement for charged particles within a hadronic signature with the tracking momentum measurement. This technique leads to a 20% improvement in the jet energy resolution, which yields a 7% improvement in the reconstructed dijet mass width for H&rarr bbbar events. The improved energy calculation leads to a 5% improvement in our expected 95% C.L. upper limit on the Higgs boson production cross section.
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