  The potential for the discovery of a Standard Model Higgs boson in the mass
range m_H < 2 m_Z in the vector boson fusion mode has been studied for the
ATLAS experiment at the LHC. The characteristic signatures of additional jets
in the forward regions of the detector and of low jet activity in the central
region allow for an efficient background rejection. Analyses for the H -> WW
and H -> tau tau decay modes have been performed using a realistic simulation
of the expected detector performance. The results obtained demonstrate the
large discovery potential in the H -> WW decay channel and the sensitivity to
Higgs boson decays into tau-pairs in the low-mass region around 120 GeV.
