The interplay between the charged Higgs and squark-gluino events at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper investigates how charged Higgs signals can be confused with squark-gluino events at the LHC, proposing a kinematic-based search strategy that improves detection prospects in supersymmetric models.

Contribution

It introduces a new kinematic approach to distinguish charged Higgs signals from SUSY backgrounds, enhancing search strategies at the LHC.

Findings

The new method extends the LHC reach for charged Higgs masses up to 800 GeV.

Standard polarization-based selections may be less effective with SUSY backgrounds.

Combining old and new cuts can effectively disentangle Higgs signals from squark-gluino events.

Abstract

In some extensions of the standard model with extended Higgs sectors, events from new particle production may pass the selection criteria for Higgs search in different channels at the LHC - 14 TeV and mimic Higgs signals. This intriguing possibility is illustrated by PYTHIA based simulations using several representative points in the parameter space of the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) including a point in the minimal supergravity model consistent with the Dark matter (DM) relic density data. Our simulations explore the interplay between the charged Higgs signal and typical squark-gluino events. We argue that the standard selections like the one based on the polarization properties of the $\tau$'s from charged Higgs decay, though adequate for handling the SM background, may not be very efficient in the presence of SUSY backgrounds. We then propose an alternative search strategy based on pure kinematics which sufficiently controls both the SM and the MSSM backgrounds. For charged Higgs masses ($H^{\pm}$) in the deep decoupling regime (600 GeV $\lsim m_{H^{\pm}} \lsim$ 800 GeV) this method works well and extends the LHC reach close to 800 GeV for an integrated luminosity of 30 $fb^{-1}$ with or without the SUSY background. For a lighter charged Higgs a judicious combination of the old selections and some of the cuts proposed by us may disentangle the Higgs signal from the squark-gluino backgrounds quite effectively.