Squark Effects on Higgs Boson Production and Decay at the LHC

Abstract

In the context of the Minimal Supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model, I discuss the effects of relatively light top and bottom scalar quarks on the main production mechanism of the lightest SUSY neutral Higgs boson $h$ at the LHC, the gluon--gluon fusion mechanism $gg \to h$, and on the most promising discovery channel, the two--photon decay mode $h \to γγ$. In some areas of the parameter space, the top and bottom squark contributions can strongly reduce the production cross section times the branching ratio.

Figures (4)

• Figure 1: SUSY loop effects on R$(h \rightarrow \gamma \gamma)$, R$(gg \rightarrow h)$ and their product R$(gg \rightarrow \gamma \gamma)$ as a function of $\tilde{A}_{t}$ for $\hbox{tg}\beta=2.5$ and $m_{\tilde{t}_1}=200$ GeV; $M_2=-\mu=250$ GeV.
• Figure 2: SUSY loop effects on R$(gg \rightarrow \gamma \gamma)$ as a function of $\tilde{A}_{t}$ for $\hbox{tg}\beta=2.5$ and $m_{\tilde{t}_1}=165,400$ and 600 GeV.
• Figure 3: SUSY loop effects on R$(h \rightarrow \gamma \gamma)$ and R$(gg \rightarrow h \rightarrow \gamma \gamma)$ as a function of $-\mu$ for $\hbox{tg}\beta=50$ and $m_{\tilde{b}_1}=200$ GeV and $A\equiv \tilde{A}_t = \tilde{A}_b=0 (0.5)$ TeV for the thick (thin) curves.
• Figure 4: SUSY loop effects on R$(h \rightarrow \gamma \gamma)$ and R$(gg \rightarrow h \rightarrow \gamma \gamma)$ as a function of $\tilde{A}_t$ for $\hbox{tg}\beta=2.5, M_A=200$ GeV and two values $m_{\tilde{t}_1}=200$ and 400 GeV.