Searching for $H \to hh \to b\bar b\tau\tau$ in the 2HDM Type-I at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential of the LHC to detect a specific Higgs decay process in the 2HDM Type-I model, focusing on the decay chain $H o hh o bar{b} au au$, and assesses the sensitivity of current and future collider runs.

Contribution

It provides a Monte Carlo analysis demonstrating the LHC's capability to observe this decay channel, offering insights into the inverted mass hierarchy scenario of the 2HDM Type-I.

Findings

Sensitivity already exists at LHC Run 3

HL-LHC can confirm or exclude the scenario

Potential to discover light Higgs bosons in this decay mode

Abstract

Unlike other realisations of the 2-Higgs Doublet Model (2HDM), the so-called Type-I allows for a very light Higgs boson spectrum. Specifically, herein, the heaviest of the two CP-even neutral Higgs states, $H$, can be the one discovered at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2012, with a mass of $\approx 125$ GeV and couplings consistent with those predicted by the Standard Model (SM). In such a condition of the model, referred to as `inverted mass hierarchy', the decay of the SM-like Higgs state into pairs of the lightest CP-even neutral Higgs boson, $h$, is possible, for masses of the latter ranging from $M_H/2\approx 65$ GeV down to 15 GeV or so, all compatible with experimental constraints. In this paper, we investigate the scope of the LHC in accessing the process $gg\to H \to hh\to b\bar b\tau\tau$ by performing a Monte Carlo (MC) analysis aimed at extracting this signal from the SM backgrounds, in presence of a dedicated trigger choice and kinematic selection. We prove that some sensitivity to such a channel exists already at Run 3 of the LHC while the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) will be able to either confirm or disprove this theoretical scenario over sizable regions of its parameter space.