Light NMSSM Higgs Boson Search in bb Final States with the CMS Experiment

Abstract

On July 4th, 2012 the discovery of a boson compatible with the Higgs boson of the Standard Model of particle physics was announced. However, the exact properties of this particle and the precise structure of a possible Higgs sector still need 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 a search for such light NMSSM Higgs bosons decaying in the bb channel with the CMS experiment at the LHC. The analysis strategy is discussed and feasibility studies using simulated events have been performed. The analysis of the 8 TeV collision data is currently in progress