Closing the Window on Light Charged Higgs Bosons in the NMSSM

Abstract

In the Next-to-Minimal SuperSymmetric Model (NMSSM) the lightest CP-odd Higgs bosons (a1) can be very light. As a consequence, in addition to the standard charged Higgs boson (h±) decays considered in the MSSM for a light charged Higgs (mh±<mt), the branching fraction forh±→a1Wcan be dominant. We investigate how this signal can be searched for intt-production at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the case that (ma1≳2mB) with thea1giving rise to a singlebb--jet and discuss to what extent the LHC experiments are able to discover such a scenario with an integrated luminosity ~20 fb−1. We also discuss the implications of the possible Higgs-signal observed at the LHC.