LHC Discovery Potential for Non-Standard Higgs Bosons in the 3b Channel

Abstract

In a variety of well motivated models, such as two Higgs Doublet Models (2HDMs) and the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM), there are neutral Higgs bosons that have significantly enhanced couplings to b-quarks and tau leptons in comparison to those of the SM Higgs. These so called non-standard Higgs bosons could be copiously produced at the LHC in association with b quarks, and subsequently decay into b-quark pairs. However, this production channel suffers from large irreducible QCD backgrounds. We propose a new search strategy for non-standard neutral Higgs bosons at the 7 TeV LHC in the 3b's final state topology. We perform a simulation of the signal and backgrounds, using state of the art tools and methods for different sets of selection cuts, and conclude that neutral Higgs bosons with couplings to b-quarks of about 0.3 or larger, and masses up to 400 GeV, could be seen with a luminosity of 30 fb^{-1}. In the case of the MSSM we also discuss the complementarity between the 3b channel and the inclusive tau pair channel in exploring the supersymmetric parameter space.

14 pages, 3 figures, 4 tables, references added, published version

References in corpus (10)

• PYTHIA 6.4 Physics and Manual
• Comparative study of various algorithms for the merging of parton showers and matrix elements in hadronic collisions
• Expected Performance of the ATLAS Experiment - Detector, Trigger and Physics
• A 125 GeV SM-like Higgs in the MSSM and the $\gamma \gamma$ rate
• QCD radiation in the production of heavy colored particles at the LHC
• Search for neutral Higgs bosons decaying to tau pairs in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV
• Viability of MSSM scenarios at very large tan(beta)
• SUSY QCD Corrections to Associated Higgs-bottom Quark Production
• Search for Higgs bosons of the minimal supersymmetric standard model in p-pbar collisions at sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV
• Prospects for Higgs Searches with the Tri-bottom Channel in Unified SUSY Models

Cited by in corpus (13)

• Light Stau Phenomenology and the Higgs γγRate
• Indirect Probes of the MSSM after the Higgs Discovery
• A Minimal Flavor Violating 2HDM at the LHC
• Constraining extra-fermion(s) from the Higgs boson data
• Search for a Higgs boson decaying into a b-quark pair and produced in association with b quarks in proton-proton collisions at 7 TeV
• Heavy Higgs Bosons at 14 TeV and 100 TeV
• Closing the Wedge: Search Strategies for Extended Higgs Sectors with Heavy Flavor Final States
• High scale flavor alignment in two-Higgs doublet models and its phenomenology
• Decays of $H^0/A^0$ in supersymmetric scenarios with heavy sfermions
• Heavy Higgs as a Portal to the Supersymmetric Electroweak Sector
• Multiple b-jets Reveal Top Super-partners and the 125 GeV Higgs
• Rare top-quark decays $t\to cg(g)$ in the aligned two-Higgs-doublet model
• Discovering Nonstandard Higgs bosons in the H -> ZA Channel Decay to Multileptons