Dominant production of heavier Higgs bosons through vector boson fusion in NMSSM

Abstract

We study the features of the additional Higgs bosons in the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model where the lightest beyond Standard Model Higgs boson does not dominantly couple to up-type quarks. The new state is dominantly singlet-like while it can also accommodate a small down-type Higgs component. The gluon-gluon fusion cannot be adequate enough for such a Higgs production. We show that the vector-boson fusion may become the leading production mechanism to probe this new scalar at the LHC. Using the existing 13 TeV LHC data for an integrated luminosity $36.1f{b}^{-1}$, we show the LHC constraints on the parameter space. Finally, we also study the reach of the planned high luminosity LHC ($\mathcal{L}=3{\mathrm{ab}}^{-1}$ at $\sqrt{s}=$~14 TeV) and the proposed high energy upgrade of the LHC ($\mathcal{L}=15{\mathrm{ab}}^{-1}$ at $\sqrt{s}=$~27 TeV) to probe this singlet-like Higgs scalar.

Comments: New figures added, text substantially modified