Search for doubly charged Higgs bosons with the OPAL detector at LEP

A search for pair-produced doubly charged Higgs bosons has been performed using data samples corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 614 pb(-1) collected with the OPAL detector at LEP at centre-of-mass energies between 189 GeV and 209 GeV. No evidence for a signal has been observed. A mass limit of 98.5 GeV/c(2) at the 95% confidence level has been set for the doubly charged Higgs particle in left-right symmetric models. This is the first search for doubly charged Higgs bosons at centre-of-mass energies larger than 91 GeV. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.