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

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

Prospects for Higgs boson searches with ATLAS Part I: Higgs decays to gauge bosons

The discovery prospect of the ATLAS detector for the Higgs boson decays to gauge bosons is reviewe

Geant4 Muon Digitization in the ATHENA Framework

The aim of this note is to describe the Muon Digitization software packages, completely re-written to run in the Athena framework and to interface with the Geant4 Muon Spectrometer simulation. The Muon Digitization is the simulation of the Raw Data Objects (RDO), or the electronic output, of the Muon Spectrometer. It consists of two steps: in the first step, the output of the detector simulation, the Muon Hits, is converted to Muon Digits, namely intermediate objects that can be fed into the reconstruction. In the second step, the Muon Digits are converted into RDO, the transient representation of raw data byte stream. We describe the detailed implementation of the first step of the Muon Digitization, where the detector simulation output is âﾜdigitizedâ into Muon Digits. We describe the fundamentals of the Muon Digitization algorithms, outlining their global structure and the infrastructure for the simulation of piled-up events. We also describe the details of the digitization validation procedures against the Monte Carlo information

Universality test of the charged Higgs boson couplings at the LHC and at B factories

Many extensions of the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics predict the existence of charged Higgs bosons with substantial couplings to SM particles, which would render them observable both directly at the LHC and indirectly at B-factories. For example, the charged Higgs boson couplings to fermions in two doublet Higgs models of type II, are proportional to the ratio of the two Higgs doublet vacuum expectation values (tan(beta)) and fermionic mass factors and could thus be substantial at large tan(beta) and/or for heavy fermions. In this work we perform a model-independent study of the charged Higgs boson couplings at the LHC and at B-factories for large values of tan(beta). We have shown that at high luminosity it is possible to measure the couplings of a charged Higgs boson to the third generation of quarks up to an accuracy of 10%. We further argue that by combining the possible measurements of the LHC and the B-factories, it is possible to perform a universality test of charged Higgs boson couplings to quarks.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures, LaTeX (style changed to PRD format, text expanded, references added