Central Exclusive Diffractive MSSM Higgs-Boson Production at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper reviews the potential of central exclusive diffractive production at the LHC to explore MSSM Higgs bosons, highlighting its ability to probe specific parameter regions and Yukawa couplings.

Contribution

It demonstrates that forward proton detectors at the LHC can effectively study MSSM Higgs bosons through CED production, offering new insights into the Higgs sector.

Findings

CED channels can probe the M_A--tan_beta parameter space.

Potential to access bottom Yukawa couplings up to 250 GeV.

Forward proton detectors enhance MSSM Higgs discovery prospects.

Abstract

The prospects for central exclusive diffractive (CED) production of MSSM Higgs bosons at the LHC are reviewed. It is shown that the CED channels, making use of forward proton detectors at the LHC installed at 220 m and 420 m distance around ATLAS and / or CMS, can provide important information on the Higgs sector of the MSSM. In particular, CED production of the neutral CP-even Higgs bosons h and H and their decays into bottom quarks has the potential to probe interesting regions of the M_A--tan_beta parameter plane of the MSSM and may give access to the bottom Yukawa couplings of the Higgs bosons up to masses of M_H \approx 250 GeV.