Pair production of charged Higgs bosons in association with bottom quark pairs at the Large Hadron Collider

Abstract

We study the process gg -> b bbar H+ H- at large tan(beta), where it represents the dominant production mode of charged Higgs boson pairs in a Type II 2-Higgs Doublet Model, including the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. The ability to select this signal would in principle enable the measurements of some triple-Higgs couplings, which in turn would help understanding the structure of the extended Higgs sector. We outline a selection procedure that should aid in disentangling the Higgs signal from the main irreducible background. This exploits a signature made up by `four b-quark jets, two light-quark jets, a tau-lepton and missing energy'. While, for tan(beta) \gsim 30 and over a significant M_H+/- range above the top mass, a small signal emerges already at the Large Hadron Collider after 100 fb^{-1}, ten times as much luminosity would be needed to perform accurate measurements of Higgs parameters in the above final state, rendering this channel a primary candidate to benefit from the so-called `Super' Large Hadron Collider option, for which a tenfold increase in instantaneous luminosity is currently being considered.

Comments: 27 pages, 8 figures, references added; substantial revision (additional unitarity contraints, tau-decay effects, improved selection), conclusions unchanged, accepted for publication in EPJC