CP-violating Supersymmetric Higgs at the Tevatron and LHC

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the detectability of a CP-violating MSSM Higgs boson decaying into lighter Higgs pairs at the Tevatron and LHC, finding it challenging at Tevatron but promising at the LHC with sufficient data.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the Higgs signal in the CP-violating MSSM framework, including background treatment and event selection strategies for LHC and Tevatron.

Findings

Tevatron unlikely to observe the signal with current data.

LHC can potentially detect the Higgs signal with 20-50 fb$^{-1}$ of data.

Signal-to-background ratio favorable at the LHC after cuts.

Abstract

We analyze the prospect for observing the intermediate neutral Higgs boson ($h_2$) in its decay to two lighter Higgs bosons ($h_1$) at the presently operating hadron colliders in the framework of the CP violating MSSM using the PYTHIA event generator. We consider the lepton+ 4-jets+ $\met$ channel from associate $W h_2$ production, with $W h_2 \ra W h_1 h_1 \ra \ell \nu_\ell b \bar b b\bar b$. We require two, three or four tagged $b$-jets. We explicitly consider all relevant Standard Model backgrounds, treating $c$-jets separately from light flavor and gluon jets and allowing for mistagging. We find that it is very hard to observe this signature at the Tevatron, even with 20 fb$^{-1}$ of data, in the LEP--allowed region of parameter space due to the small signal efficiency, even though the background is manageable. At the LHC, a priori huge SM backgrounds can be suppressed by applying judiciously chosen kinematical selections. After all cuts, we are left with a signal cross section of around 0.5 fb, and a signal to background ratio between 1.2 and 2.9. According to our analysis this Higgs signal should be viable at the LHC in the vicinity of present LEP exclusion once 20 to 50 fb$^{-1}$ of data have been accumulated at $\sqrt{s}=14$ TeV.