Charged Higgs boson in the $W^{\pm }$ Higgs channel at the Large Hadron Collider

Abstract

In light of the recent discovery of a neutral Higgs boson, $H_{\mathrm{obs}}$, with a mass near 125 GeV, we reassess the LHC discovery potential of a charged Higgs boson, $H^{\pm }$, in the $W^{\pm }{H}_{\mathrm{obs}}$ decay channel. This decay channel can be particularly important for a $H^{\pm }$ heavier than the top quark, when it is produced through the $pp\to t{H}^{\pm }$ process. The knowledge of the mass of $H_{\mathrm{obs}}$ provides an additional handle in the kinematic selection when reconstructing a Breit-Wigner resonance in the $H_{\mathrm{obs}}\to b\bar{b}$ decay channel. We consider some extensions of the Standard Model Higgs sector, with and without supersymmetry, and perform a dedicated signal-to-background analysis to test the scope of this channel for the LHC running at the design energy (14 TeV), for 300/fb (standard) and 3000/fb (high) integrated luminosities. We find that, while this channel does not show much promise for a supersymmetric $H^{\pm }$ state, significant portions of the parameter spaces of several two-Higgs doublet models are testable.

Comments: 26 pages, 11 figures. Typos corrected and some references added. Version to appear in NPB