Maximum significance at the LHC and Higgs decays to muons

We present a new way to define and compute the maximum significance achievable for signal and background processes at the LHC, using all available phase space information. As an example, we show that a light Higgs boson produced in weak-boson fusion with a subsequent decay into muons can be extracted from the backgrounds. The method, aimed at phenomenological studies, can be incorporated in parton-level event generators and accommodate parametric descriptions of detector effects for selected observables. (orig.)