Non-standard charged Higgs decay at the LHC in Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model

TL;DR

This paper explores a unique decay mode of a light charged Higgs in the NMSSM, which could evade current LHC bounds and be detectable with early LHC data.

Contribution

It introduces a novel decay channel of the charged Higgs involving singlet-like pseudoscalars in the NMSSM, and assesses its detectability at the LHC.

Findings

Such decay modes can evade existing LHC bounds.

The scenario can be probed with 10 fb$^{-1}$ of data at 13 and 14 TeV.

Simulation indicates potential for early detection.

Abstract

We consider next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model (NMSSM) which has a gauge singlet superfield. In the scale invariant superpotential we do not have the mass terms and the whole Lagrangian has an additional $Z_3$ symmetry. This model can have light scalar and/or pseudoscalar allowed by the recent data from LHC and the old data from LEP. We investigate the situation where a relatively light charged Higgs can decay to such singlet-like pseudoscalar and a $W^\pm$ boson giving rise to final state containing $\tau$ and/or $b$-jets and lepton(s). Such decay evades the recent bounds on charged Higgs from the LHC. According to our PYTHIA-FastJet based simulation such a scenario can be probed with early data of 10 fb$^{-1}$ at the LHC center of mass energy of 13 and 14 TeV.