New Light $H^\pm$ Discovery Channels at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper proposes new production and decay channels for light charged Higgs bosons at the LHC within the 2HDM Type-I, offering alternative discovery methods beyond traditional top decay searches.

Contribution

It introduces novel pair production channels and decay modes for charged Higgs bosons in the 2HDM Type-I, with benchmark points to guide experimental searches.

Findings

New channels $pp\to H^\pm h/A$ and $pp\to H^+ H^-$ are promising for discovery.

Bosonic decay modes $H^\pm \to W^\pm h/A$ can be significant.

Eight benchmark points are proposed for experimental exploration.

Abstract

A light charged Higgs boson has been searched for at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) via top (anti)quark decay, i.e., $t \to b H^+$, if kinematically allowed. In this contribution, we propose new channels for light charged Higgs boson searches via the pair productions $pp\to H^\pm h/A$ and $pp\to H^+ H^-$ at the LHC in the context of the Two-Higgs Doublet Model (2HDM) Type-I. By focusing on a case where the heavy H state is the Standard Model (SM)-like one already observed, we investigate the production of the aforementioned charged Higgs bosons and their bosonic decay channels, namely, $H^\pm \to W^\pm h$ and/or $H^\pm \to W^\pm A$. We demonstrate that such production and decay channels can yield substantial alternative discovery channels for $H^\pm$ bosons at the LHC. Finally, we propose eight benchmark points (BPs) to motivate the search for such signatures.