Logo
ScienceStack
Table of Contents
Fetching ...
Sign In

Detection of the neutral MSSM Higgs bosons in the intense-coupling regime at the LHC

Edward Boos, Abdelhak Djouadi, Alexander Nikitenko

Abstract

We analyse the prospects to detect at the LHC the neutral Higgs particles of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, when the masses of the two CP-even $h,H$ and of the CP-odd $A$ boson are close to one another, and the value of $\tb$ is large. In this "intense-coupling regime", the Higgs bosons have strongly enhanced couplings to isospin down-type fermions and large total decay widths, so that the $γγ, WW^*$ and $ZZ^*$ decay modes of the three Higgs bosons are strongly suppressed. We advocate the use of the decays into muon pairs, $h,H,A \to μ^+ μ^-$, to resolve the three Higgs boson peaks: although the branching ratios are small, ${\cal O}(10^{4})$, the resolution on muons is good enough to allow for their detection, if the mass splitting is large enough. Using an event generator analysis and a fast detector simulation, we show that only the process $pp \to b\bar{b} μ^+ μ^-$, when at least one of the $b$-quarks is detected, is viable.

Detection of the neutral MSSM Higgs bosons in the intense-coupling regime at the LHC

Abstract

We analyse the prospects to detect at the LHC the neutral Higgs particles of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, when the masses of the two CP-even and of the CP-odd boson are close to one another, and the value of is large. In this "intense-coupling regime", the Higgs bosons have strongly enhanced couplings to isospin down-type fermions and large total decay widths, so that the and decay modes of the three Higgs bosons are strongly suppressed. We advocate the use of the decays into muon pairs, , to resolve the three Higgs boson peaks: although the branching ratios are small, , the resolution on muons is good enough to allow for their detection, if the mass splitting is large enough. Using an event generator analysis and a fast detector simulation, we show that only the process , when at least one of the -quarks is detected, is viable.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 5 sections, 2 equations, 6 figures, 1 table.

Table of Contents

  1. 1. Introduction
  2. 2. The intense-coupling regime
  3. 3. Signals and backgrounds at the LHC
  4. 4. An event generator analysis
  5. 5. Conclusions

Figures (6)

  • Figure 1: The masses of the MSSM Higgs bosons (left) and the normalized couplings of the CP-even Higgs bosons to vector bosons and third-generation quarks (right) as a function of $M_A$ and $tan \beta=30$. For the $b$-quark couplings, the values $10 \times g_{\Phi bb}^{-2}$ are plotted.
  • Figure 2: The branching ratios of the neutral MSSM Higgs bosons $h,A,H$ for the various decay modes as a function of $M_A$ and for $tan \beta=30$.
  • Figure 3: Total decay widths $\Gamma_\Phi$ (left) and the mass bands $M_\Phi \pm \Gamma_\Phi$ (right) for the neutral MSSM Higgs bosons as a function of $M_A$ and for $tan \beta=30$.
  • Figure 4: The differential cross section in pb/GeV as a function of the dimuon mass for the point P1, for both the signal and signal plus background in the processes $pp (\to \Phi) \to \mu^+ \mu^-$ (left figure) and $pp (\to \Phi b\bar{b}) \to \mu^+ \mu^- b\bar{b}$ (right figure).
  • Figure 5: The differential cross section in pb/GeV as a function of $M_A$ for both the signal and signal plus background in the process $pp (\to \Phi b\bar{b}) \to \mu^+ \mu^- b\bar{b}$ for P2 (left) and P3 (right).
  • ...and 1 more figures