Associated Production of CP-odd and Charged Higgs Bosons at Hadron Colliders

Abstract

In the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, the masses of the charged Higgs boson ($H^{\pm }$) and the CP-odd scalar ($A$) are related by $M_{H^{+}}^2=M_A^2+m_W^2$ at the Born level. Because the coupling of $W^{-}$-$A$-$H^{+}$ is fixed by gauge interaction, the Born level production rate of $q{\bar{q}}^{\prime }\to W^{\pm \ast }\to A{H}^{\pm }$ depends only on one supersymmetry parameter -- the mass ($M_A^{}$) of $A$. We examine the sensitivity of the LHC to this signal event in the $A(\text{ra}b\bar{b})H^{+}(\text{ra}{\tau }^{+}{\nu }_{\tau })$ and $A(\text{ra}b\bar{b})H^{+}(\text{ra}t\bar{b})$ decay channels. We illustrate how to test the mass relation between $A$ and $H^{+}$ in case that the signal is found. If the signal is not found, the product of the decay branching ratios of $A$ and $H^{\pm }$ predicted by the MSSM is bounded from above as a function of $M_A$.

Comments: Version published in Physical Review D (minor refinements, references added, RevTex4, 47 pages, 13 figures)