Very light $CP$-odd Higgs bosons of the NMSSM at the LHC in $4b$-quark final states

Very light $C P$ -odd Higgs bosons of the NMSSM at the LHC in $4 b$ -quark final states

M. M. Almarashi and S. Moretti

Phys. Rev. D 84, 015014 – Published 25 July 2011

Abstract

We study the detectability of the lightest $C P$ -odd Higgs boson of the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model (NMSSM), $a_{1}$ , at the LHC through its production in association with a bottom-quark pair followed by the $a_{1} \to b \bar{b}$ decay. It is shown that, for large $\tan β$ and very high luminosity of the LHC, there exist regions of the NMSSM parameter space that can be exploited to detect the $a_{1}$ through this channel. This signature is a characteristic feature of the NMSSM in comparison to the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM), as $a_{1}$ masses involved are well below those allowed in the MSSM for the corresponding $C P$ -odd Higgs state.