Reinforcing the no-lose theorem for NMSSM Higgs discovery at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the LHC's potential to detect NMSSM Higgs bosons decaying into light CP-odd Higgs pairs, highlighting promising production and decay channels that could reveal these particles across extensive parameter regions.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive analysis of Higgs production and decay modes in the NMSSM, emphasizing the viability of detecting light Higgs states via associated production with b-quarks and subsequent decays.

Findings

Large regions of NMSSM parameter space favor these decay channels.

Production rates are significant for high tanβ values.

Multiple decay modes provide detectable signals.

Abstract

We show the potential of the LHC to detect a CP-even Higgs boson of the NMSSM, $h_1$ or $h_2$, decaying into two rather light CP-odd Higgs bosons, $a_1$, by exploiting the production mode based on Higgs-strahlung off $b$-quarks, i.e., the channel $pp\to b\bar b h_{1,2}$. We also consider the case of $h_2\to h_1 h_1$ decays. It is found that these decays have dominant BRs over large regions of the NMSSM parameter space where tan$\beta$ is large, a condition which also favours the $pp\to b\bar b h_{1,2}$ production rates. Further decays of the light Higgs boson pairs ($a_1$ and $h_1$) into photon, muon, tau and $b$ final states are also considered. The overall production and decay rates for these processes at inclusive level are sizable and should help extracting at least one Higgs boson signal over the NMSSM parameter space.