Search for Higgs decays to tau lepton pairs at the Tevatron

TL;DR

This study searches for neutral supersymmetric Higgs bosons decaying into tau pairs at the Tevatron, setting limits on production rates and MSSM parameters due to no observed excess.

Contribution

First search for MSSM Higgs decays to tau pairs at the Tevatron, providing exclusion limits on cross-section and MSSM parameters.

Findings

No significant excess observed over standard model backgrounds.

Set exclusion limits on Higgs production cross-section times branching ratio.

Constrained MSSM parameters m_A and tan_beta.

Abstract

We present a search for neutral supersymmetric Higgs bosons decaying to tau+tau- pairs produced in ppbar collisions at sqrt{s}=1.96 TeV. The data have been collected with the CDF II and D0 detectors at the Tevatron collider at Fermilab (1 fb^-1 of integrated luminosity per experiment). No significant excess above the standard model backgrounds is observed. We set exclusion limits on the Higgs production cross-section times the branching fraction of its decay to tau+tau- pairs for Higgs masses in the range from 90 to 250 GeV/c^2. We also set exclusion limits on MSSM parameters m_A and tan_beta in several benchmark scenarios.