Higgs Boson Signals in Three b-jet Final States at the Fermilab Tevatron

Abstract

At the Fermilab Tevatron, final states with three tagged b-jets could play an important role in searches for a Higgs boson with mass in the range 100-300 GeV. These signals arise from gb fusion and we demonstrate their observability in the limit of a large b-quark Yukawa coupling. Rather promising discovery limits on such a coupling are obtained and consequent effects on the parameter space of the Higgs-boson sector in the MSSM are discussed.

Figures (4)

• Figure 1: Distribution in the invariant mass of the pair of $b$-jets with the largest $p_T$. Solid, dashed and dotted lines correspond to three different masses (marked) of the Higgs boson.
• Figure 2: The number of events in each $m_{12}$ bin for signal (points) and the total background (solid line). The individual contributions to the background are also shown (dashed and dotted lines).
• Figure 3: Model-independent discovery limits for a given luminosity. The area above the curves can be excluded at 95% CL.
• Figure 4: 95% C.L. exclusion contours within the MSSM. Solid (dashed) lines correspond to the case $m_{\tilde{f}} = |\mu| = M_2 = 1 \: {\rm TeV} ~(150 \: {\rm GeV} )$.