Discovering the Higgs with Low Mass Muon Pairs

TL;DR

This paper explores a novel method to detect a light Higgs boson through its decay into pseudoscalars that subsequently decay into muon pairs, enhancing discovery prospects at Tevatron and LHC.

Contribution

It introduces a new search strategy focusing on pseudoscalar decays to muons, improving detection sensitivity for light Higgs bosons in certain models.

Findings

Potential to discover Higgs with complete Tevatron data

Early LHC data can also be effective for this search

Enhances detection prospects for light Higgs in pseudoscalar decay channels

Abstract

Many models of electroweak symmetry breaking have an additional light pseudoscalar. If the Higgs boson can decay to a new pseudoscalar, LEP searches for the Higgs can be significantly altered and the Higgs can be as light as 86 GeV. Discovering the Higgs boson in these models is challenging when the pseudoscalar is lighter than 10 GeV because it decays dominantly into tau leptons. In this paper, we discuss discovering the Higgs in a subdominant decay mode where one of the pseudoscalars decays to a pair of muons. This search allows for potential discovery of a cascade-decaying Higgs boson with the complete Tevatron data set or early data at the LHC.