The ATLAS discovery potential for MSSM neutral Higgs bosons decaying to a mu+mu- pair in the mass range up to 130 GeV

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the ATLAS experiment's ability to discover MSSM neutral Higgs bosons decaying into mu+mu- pairs within a specific mass and tan beta range at 14 TeV, focusing on the challenging background control.

Contribution

It presents a detailed analysis of the discovery potential for MSSM Higgs bosons in the mu+mu- decay channel, including background suppression techniques, in a parameter space not fully explored by previous experiments.

Findings

Potential to discover MSSM Higgs in the specified mass and tan beta range.

Development of background control methods for Z->mu+mu- with b-jets.

Assessment of the H boson contribution to the signal.

Abstract

Results are presented on the discovery potential for MSSM neutral Higgs bosons in the Mh-{max}scenario. The region of large tan beta, between 15 and 50, and mass between ~ 95 and 130 GeV is considered in the framework of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), for a centre-of-mass energy = 14 TeV. This parameter region is not fully covered by the present data either from LEP or from Tevatron. The h/A bosons, supposed to be very close in mass in that region, are studied in the channel h/A -> mu+mu- accompanied by two b-jets. The study includes a method to control the most copious background, Zo -> mu+mu- accompanied by two b-jets. A possible contribution of the H boson to the signal is also considered.