Search for a Higgs boson decaying into a b-quark pair and produced in association with b quarks in proton-proton collisions at 7 TeV

TL;DR

This paper reports a search for a Higgs boson decaying into b-quark pairs produced alongside additional b quarks in proton-proton collisions at 7 TeV, setting limits on MSSM parameters.

Contribution

First search targeting Higgs decays to b-quark pairs with associated b production at 7 TeV, providing new constraints on MSSM parameters.

Findings

No significant excess observed over background.

Set upper limits on cross section times branching ratio.

Constrained MSSM tan(beta) to approximately 18 at M_A ~ 100 GeV.

Abstract

A search for a neutral Higgs boson decaying to a pair of b quarks, and produced in association with at least one additional b quark, is presented. Multijet final states with three jets identified as originating from b quarks, at least one of which may include a non-isolated muon, are studied. The data used in this analysis correspond to an integrated luminosity of 2.7-4.8 inverse femtobarns, collected by the CMS experiment in proton-proton collisions at the LHC at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV. This search is particularly sensitive to Higgs bosons in scenarios of the Minimal Supersymmetric Model (MSSM) with large values of tan(beta). No excess over the predicted background from standard model processes is observed. Stringent upper limits on cross section times branching fraction are derived and interpreted as bounds in the MSSM tan(beta) and M[A] parameter-space. Observed 95% confidence level upper limits reach as low as tan(beta) approximately 18 for M[A] approximately 100 GeV.