# Discovery prospects of a light Higgs boson at the LHC in type-I 2HDM

## TL;DR

This paper explores the potential to discover a light Higgs boson with mass 70-110 GeV at the LHC within the type-I 2HDM framework, focusing on decay channels to bottom quarks and photons, and analyzing collider signatures.

## Contribution

It provides a detailed collider analysis for detecting a light Higgs in the type-I 2HDM, highlighting the observability in boosted regimes and photon decay channels.

## Key findings

- Light Higgs can be observed with a few thousand fb$^{-1}$ in the $b\bar{b}$ channel.
- Photon decay mode accessible with a few hundred fb$^{-1}$ near the fermiophobic limit.
- Boosted regime analysis reduces QCD background significantly.

## Abstract

We present a comprehensive analysis of observing a light Higgs boson in the mass range $70$ -- $110$ GeV at the 13/14 TeV LHC, in the context of the type-I two-Higgs-doublet model. The decay of the light Higgs to a pair of bottom quarks is dominant in most parts of the parameter space, except in the fermiophobic limit. Here its decay to bosons, (mainly a pair of photons), becomes important. We perform an extensive collider analysis for the $b\bar{b}$ and $\gamma \gamma$ final states. The light scalar is tagged in the highly boosted regimes for the $b \bar{b}$ mode to reduce the enormous QCD background. This decay can be observed with a few thousand fb$^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity at the LHC. Near the fermiophobic limit, the decay of the light Higgs to a pair of photons can even be probed with a few hundred fb$^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity at the LHC.