Three heavy jet events at hadron colliders as a sensitive probe of the Higgs sector

Abstract

Assuming that a non-standard neutral Higgs with an enhanced Yukawa coupling to a bottom quark is observed at future hadron experiments, we propose a method for a better understanding of the Higgs sector. Our procedure is based on "counting" the number of events with heavy jets (where "heavy" stands for a c or b jet) versus b jets, in the final state of processes in which the Higgs is produced in association with a single high p_T c or b jet. We show that an observed signal of the type proposed, at either the Tevatron or the LHC, will rule out the popular two Higgs doublet model of type II as well as its supersymmetric version - the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM), and may provide new evidence in favor of some more exotic multi Higgs scenarios. As an example, we show that in a version of a two Higgs doublet model which naturally accounts for the large mass of the top quark, our signal can be easily detected at the LHC within that framework. We also find that such a signal may be observable at the upgraded Tevatron RunIII, if the neutral Higgs in this model has a mass around 100 GeV and \tan\beta > 50 and if the efficiency for distinguishing a c jet from a light jet will reach the level of 50%.Comment: Revtex, 11 pages, 4 figures embedded in the text. Main changes with respect to Version 1: Numerical results re-calculated using the CTEQ5L pdf, improved discussion on the experimental consequences, new references added. Conclusions remain unchanged. As will appear in Phys. Rev.