Searches for MSSM Higgs bosons at ATLAS and CMS

TL;DR

This paper reports on searches for MSSM Higgs bosons at the LHC, setting exclusion limits based on proton-proton collision data from ATLAS and CMS, focusing on neutral and charged Higgs decay channels.

Contribution

It presents the first combined search results for MSSM Higgs bosons using 2011-2012 LHC data, establishing new exclusion limits on their masses and couplings.

Findings

Exclusion limits at 95% confidence level for neutral Higgs bosons as a function of m_A and tanβ.

Upper limits on the branching fraction of top quark decays to charged Higgs bosons.

No evidence found for MSSM Higgs bosons within the analyzed data.

Abstract

The Minimal Supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model (MSSM) predicts the existence of three neutral and two charged Higgs bosons. Searches for these MSSM Higgs bosons are presented, based on proton-proton collisions recorded in 2011 and 2012 by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the LHC. The neutral Higgs bosons are searched through their decays into pairs of oppositely charged tau leptons. The exclusion limits at 95% confidence level are shown as a function of the $m_A$ and $\tan\beta$ parameters. The search for the charged Higgs bosons is based on their production through the decays of top quarks in the $t\bar{t}$ process, $t \to bH^+$. The Higgs bosons subsequently decay predominantly into a tau lepton and a neutrino. Upper limits are set on the branching fraction $B(t \to bH^+)$, combining the final states with leptonic and hadronic tau decay modes.