Charged Higgs bosons in the NMSSM under current LHC constraints

Abstract

Charged Higgs boson is a crucial prediction of new physics beyond the SM. In this work, we perform a comprehensive scan over the parameter space of NMSSM considering various experimental constraints including the direct search limits from the 13 TeV LHC, and consider the scenario that the next-to-lightest CP-even Higgs boson is SM-like. We find that the masses of charged Higgs bosons can be as light as 350 GeV, the lightest CP-even Higgs boson [Formula: see text] is predominantly singlet and can be as light as 48 GeV, and the lightest CP-odd Higgs boson [Formula: see text] is also singlet-dominated and can be as light as 82 GeV. The charged Higgs bosons mainly decay to [Formula: see text] or [Formula: see text], but the branching ratio of the exotic decays [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] can maximally reach 20% and 11%, respectively, which can be used to distinguish the NMSSM from MSSM. Such a heavy charged Higgs boson is inaccessible at the 13 TeV LHC with a luminosity of 36.1 fb[Formula: see text] and its detection needs higher energy and/or higher luminosity.