# Search for a light charged Higgs boson in $t \rightarrow H^{\pm}b$ decays, with $H^{\pm} \rightarrow cb$, in the lepton+jets final state in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV with the ATLAS detector

## TL;DR

This paper reports a search for a light charged Higgs boson produced in top-quark decays, focusing on the decay mode into a bottom and a charm quark, using the ATLAS detector data at 13 TeV to set upper limits on the branching fractions.

## Contribution

It introduces a novel neural network-based analysis to improve sensitivity in detecting $H^{ ext{±}}
ightarrow cb$ decays in top-quark pair events at the LHC.

## Key findings

- Set upper limits on the product of branching fractions for $H^{ ext{±}}
ightarrow cb$
- Analyzed 139 fb$^{-1}$ of proton-proton collision data at 13 TeV
- Excluded certain parameter regions for charged Higgs masses between 60 and 160 GeV

## Abstract

A search for a charged Higgs boson, $H^{\pm}$, produced in top-quark decays, $t \rightarrow H^{\pm}b$, is presented. The search targets $H^{\pm}$ decays into a bottom and a charm quark, $H^{\pm} \rightarrow cb$. The analysis focuses on a selection enriched in top-quark pair production, where one top quark decays into a leptonically decaying $W$ boson and a bottom quark, and the other top quark decays into a charged Higgs boson and a bottom quark. This topology leads to a lepton-plus-jets final state, characterised by an isolated electron or muon and at least four jets. The search exploits the high multiplicity of jets containing $b$-hadrons, and deploys a neural network classifier that uses the kinematic differences between the signal and the background. The search uses a dataset of proton-proton collisions collected at a centre-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV between 2015 and 2018 with the ATLAS detector at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, amounting to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb$^{-1}$. Observed (expected) 95% confidence-level upper limits between 0.15% (0.09%) and 0.42% (0.25%) are derived for the product of branching fractions $\mathscr{B}(t\rightarrow H^{\pm}b) \times \mathscr{B}(H^{\pm}\rightarrow cb)$ for charged Higgs boson masses between 60 and 160 GeV, assuming the SM production of the top-quark pairs.