Moderately light charged Higgs in \cp MSSM and NMSSM
Abstract
Description
In this talk I discuss some aspects of the phenomenology of a moderately light charged Higgs ($H^\pm$) with a mass $\gts 130$ GeV, lighter than the top quark, at the LHC. A charged Higgs in this mass range is still allowed in next-to-minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM) at low $\tan β$ as well as in CP-violating (\cp) Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) for a certain choice of \cp parameters, still respecting all the LEP-II bounds. In both the cases, the $H^\pm$ has a large branching ratio in the $W^\pm ϕ$ channel, where $ϕ$ denotes a generic Higgs which is dominantly pseudoscalar and hence may be substantially lighter than the LEP-II mass bound. This $ϕ$ decays dominantly into a $b \bar b$ pair. Thus production of $H^\pm$ in the top decay gives a striking $t \bar t$ signal at the LHC, where one of the top quarks decays into the $bb \bar b W$ channel, via $t \to b H^\pm, H^\pm \to ϕ$ and $ϕ\to b \bar b$. The characteristic correlation between the $b \bar b$, $b \bar b W$ and $b b \bar b W$ invariant mass peaks helps reduce the Standard Model (SM) background very effectively. For these low values of $\tan β$ the $H^\pm \to τν_τ$ channel does not provide any reach for the $H^\pm$. Thus this is a signal for both a light charged $H^\pm$ and a light $ϕ$, which is mostly pseudoscalar in nature and decays dominantly into a $b \bar b$ pair.
LaTeX, six pages, four figures. Talk presented at the IPM School and Conference on Lepton Hadron Physics, Tehran, May 2006
LaTeX, six pages, four figures. Talk presented at the IPM School and Conference on Lepton Hadron Physics, Tehran, May 2006