Detection of MSSM Higgs bosons from supersymmetric particle cascade decays at the LHC

Abstract

In the context of the Minimal Supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model, we study the production of Higgs bosons at the Large Hadron Collider via cascade decays of scalar quarks and gluinos. We focus on the cascades involving heavier charginos and neutralinos, which decay into the neutral $h,A,H$ and charged $H^{\pm }$ bosons and lighter charginos and neutralinos, but we will also discuss direct decays of third--generation squarks into their lighter partners and Higgs bosons as well as top quark decays into $H^{\pm }$ bosons. We show that the production rates of relatively light Higgs bosons, $M_{\Phi }\text{lsim}250$ GeV, via these mechanisms can be rather large in some areas of the parameter space. Performing a fast detector simulation analysis that takes into account the signals and the various backgrounds, we show that the detection of the neutral Higgs bosons through their decays into $b\bar{b}$ pairs, and of the charged Higgs particles through the ${\tau }^{\pm }\nu$ signature, is possible at the LHC.

Comments: 44 pages, latex, 17 figures