Higgs boson enhancement effects on squark-pair production at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper investigates how Higgs boson exchanges can significantly enhance third-generation squark-pair production at the LHC, emphasizing the importance of electroweak contributions and resonance effects for accurate predictions.

Contribution

It provides a complete analytical calculation of electroweak contributions to squark-pair production, including Higgs effects, which were previously not fully accounted for.

Findings

Higgs exchange can enhance production cross sections substantially at large tanβ.

Electroweak contributions can reach up to 25% of the total cross section.

Higgs effects are comparable to PDF uncertainties and are crucial for reliable analysis.

Abstract

We study the Higgs boson effects on third-generation squark-pair production in proton-proton collision at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC), including $\Stop \Stop^*$, $\Stop\Sbot^*$, and $\Sbot \Sbot^*$. We found that substantial enhancement can be obtained through s-channel exchanges of Higgs bosons at large $\tan\beta$, at which the enhancement mainly comes from $b\bar b$, $b\bar c$, and $c\bar b$ initial states. We compute the complete set of electroweak (EW) contributions to all production channels. This completes previous computations in the literature. We found that the EW contributions can be significant and can reach up to 25% in more general scenarios and at the resonance of the heavy Higgs boson. The size of Higgs enhancement is comparable or even higher than the PDF uncertainties and so must be included in any reliable analysis. A full analytical computation of all the EW contributions is presented.