Search for charged Higgs bosons in ATLAS

TL;DR

This paper reports on the ATLAS experiment's search for light charged Higgs bosons, focusing on their decay into tau and neutrino, which are predicted by models extending the Standard Model like the MSSM.

Contribution

First search for light charged Higgs bosons in ATLAS data specifically targeting the decay into tau and neutrino.

Findings

No significant excess observed over the Standard Model background.

Set upper limits on the production cross-section of charged Higgs bosons.

Constraints placed on models predicting light charged Higgs bosons.

Abstract

Charged Higgs bosons are predicted in several extensions of the Standard Model, where the Higgs sector contains more than one doublet of complex scalars, for instance in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). For $m_{H^+} < m_{\mathrm{top}}$, the dominant production mode for charged Higgs bosons at the LHC is via the decay $t\rightarrow bH^+$ of one of the top quarks in $t\bar{t}$ events. We present results on the search for such light charged Higgs bosons in the ATLAS experiment, with emphasis on the decay $H^+ \rightarrow \tau \nu$.