Search for Light NMSSM Higgs Boson Production in bb Final States with the CMS experiment

Abstract

On July 4th, 2012 the discovery of a Higgs boson compatible with the Higgs boson of the Standard Model of Particle Physics was announced. However, the precise structure of the Higgs sector still needs to be investigated. A very important question is whether additional Higgs bosons exist, as they are predicted e.g. by various extensions of the Standard Model. In the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM), scenarios are possible in which one of the Higgs bosons has a mass below that of the Z boson. Due to reduced couplings to the electroweak gauge bosons, such a particle may have evaded the previous searches at the LEP collider. This work presents the status of a search for such light NMSSM Higgs bosons decaying in the bb channel with the CMS experiment at the LHC. This presentation discusses the elements of the analysis, including the data-driven background estimation, the extraction of the signal, and the interpretation within the NMSSM framework