The ATLAS discovery potential for a heavy charged Higgs boson in gg->tbH^{+-} with H^{+-}->tb

The feasibility of detecting a heavy charged Higgs boson, m(H^{+-})>m(t)+m(b), decaying in the H^{+-}->tb channel is studied with the fast simulation of the ATLAS detector. We study the gg->H^{+-}tb production process at the LHC which together with the aforementioned decay channel leads to four b-quarks in the final state. The whole production and decay chain reads gg->H^{+-}tb->t\bar{t}b\bar{b}->b\bar{b}b\bar{b}l\nu\bar{q}q'. Combinatorial background is a major difficulty in this multi-jet environment but can be overcome by employing multivariate techniques in the event reconstruction. Requiring four b-tagged jets in the event helps to effectively suppress the Standard Model backgrounds but leads to no significant improvement in the discovery potential compared to analyses requiring only three b-tagged jets. This study indicates that charged Higgs bosons can be discovered at the LHC up to high masses (m(H^{+-})>400 GeV) in the case of large tan(beta)

Pair production of charged Higgs scalars from electroweak gauge boson fusion

We compute the contribution to charged Higgs boson pair production at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) due to the scattering of two electroweak (EW) gauge bosons, these being in turn generated via bremsstrahlung off incoming quarks: q q --> q q V^*V^* --> q q H^+H^- (V=gamma,Z,W^{+/-}). We verify that the production cross section of this mode is tan beta independent and show that it is smaller than that of H^+H^- production via q q-initiated processes but generally larger than that of the loop-induced channel gg --> H^+H^-. Pair production of charged Higgs bosons is crucial in order to test EW symmetry breaking scenarios beyond the Standard Model (SM). We show that the detection of these kind of processes at the standard LHC is however problematic, because of their poor production rates and the large backgrounds.Comment: 22 pages, latex, 8 figures (largely revised version to appear in JPG

ATLAS discovery potential for a heavy charged Higgs boson

The sensitivity of the ATLAS detector to the discovery of a heavy charged Higgs boson is presented. Assuming a heavy SUSY spectrum, the most promising channels above the top quark mass are $H^\pm\to tb$ and $H^\pm\to\tau^\pm\nu_\tau$ which provide coverage in the low and high $\tan\beta$ regions up to $\sim 600$ GeV. The achievable precisions on the charged Higgs mass and $\tan\beta$ determination are also discussed. The $H^\pm\to W^\pm h^0$ channel, though restricted to a small MSSM parameter space, shows a viable signal in NMSSM where the parameter space is less constrained. The observation of the channel $H^-\to\tau^-_L\nu_\tau + c.c.$ may constitute a distinctive evidence for models with singlet neutrinos in large extra dimensions.Comment: 18 page

Charged Higgs Boson Pairs at the LHC

We compute the cross section for pair production of charged Higgs bosons at the LHC and compare the three production mechanisms. The bottom-parton scattering process is computed to NLO, and the validity of the bottom-parton approach is established in detail. The light-flavor Drell-Yan cross section is evaluated at NLO as well. The gluon fusion process through a one-loop amplitude is then compared with these two results. We show how a complete sample of events could look, in terms of total cross sections and distributions of the heavy final states.Comment: 15 pages with 8 figure

Determining the ratio of the H^+ -> \tau \nu to H^+ -> t b-bar decay rates for large \tan\beta at the Large Hadron Collider

We present results on the determination of the observable ratio R=BR(H^+ -> \tau \nu)/BR(H^+ -> t b-bar) of charged Higgs boson decay rates as a discriminant quantity between Supersymmetric and non-Supersymmetric models. Simulation of measurements of this quantity through the analysis of the charged Higgs production process gb-> t b H^+ and relative backgrounds in the two above decay channels has been performed in the context of ATLAS. A ~12-14% accuracy on R can be achieved for \tan\beta=50, \mHc=300-500 GeV and after an integrated luminosity of 300 fb^-1. With this precision measurement, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) can easily discriminate between models for the two above scenarios, so long as \tan\beta > 20.Comment: LaTeX, 11 pages, 3 figures, 3 tables, Contribution to the Les Houches workshop ``Physics at TeV Colliders'', 26 May - 6 June, 200

Discovery potential for a charged Higgs boson decaying in the chargino-neutralino channel of the ATLAS detector at the LHC

We have investigated charged Higgs boson production via the gluon-bottom quark mode, gb -> tH+, followed by its decay into a chargino and a neutralino. The calculations are based on masses and couplings given by the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) for a specific choice of MSSM parameters. The signature of the signal is characterized by three hard leptons, a substantial missing transverse energy due to the decay of the neutralino and the chargino and three hard jets from the hadronic decay of the top quark. The possibility of detecting the signal over the Standard Model (SM) and non-SM backgrounds was studied for a set of tanBeta and mA. The existence of 5-sigma confidence level regions for H+ discovery at integrated luminosities of 100 fb-1 and 300 fb-1 is demonstrated, which cover also the intermediate region 4 < tanBeta < 10 where H+ decays to SM particles cannot be used for H+ discovery

Use of Taus in ATLAS

At the LHC, new particles can be expected that decay to final states involving taus. Examples are given from simulations by the ATLAS experiment showing how such final states can be exploited.Comment: Invited talk at the Seventh International Workshop on Tau Lepton Physics (TAU02), Santa Cruz, Ca, USA, Sept 2002, 6 pages, LaTeX, 4 eps figure

The charged Higgs in hadronic decays with the ATLAS detector

The possibility of detecting the charged Higgs through its hadronic decay modes, using the ATLAS detector at the LHC is presented in this paper, in the context of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model with the assumption that the mass scale of supersymmetric partners of ordinary matter is above the charged Higgs mass. For the charged Higgs mass below the top quark mass, the decay H+- ---> cs(bar) can be used to determine the mass of the charged Higgs assuming it is discovered through other channels, for instance H+- ---> tau nu, by observing the excess of tau production over the Standard Model prediction. Above the top quark mass, the charged Higgs can be detected through H+- ---> tb up to 400 GeV/c^2 for low or high tan beta ( 20)

Dark Matter and Collider Phenomenology with two light Supersymmetric Higgs Bosons

Recently, it has been pointed out that two different excesses of events observed at LEP could be interpreted as the CP-even Higgs bosons of the MSSM with masses of approximately 98 and 114 GeV. If this is the case, the entire MSSM Higgs sector is required to be light. In this article, we explore such a scenario in detail. We constrain the Higgs and supersymmetric spectrum using $B$ physics constraints as well as the magnetic moment of the muon. We then point out the implications for neutralino dark matter -- next generation direct detection experiments will be sensitive to all MSSM models with such a Higgs sector. Finally, we find that all models outside of a very narrow corridor of the parameter space have a charged Higgs boson which will be observed at the LHC. In those exceptional models which do not contain an observable charged Higgs, a light top squark will always be seen at the LHC, and likely at the Tevatron.Comment: 12 pages, 18 figure