Discovering the Higgs Bosons of Minimal Supersymmetry with Muons and a Bottom Quark

Abstract

We investigate the prospects for the discovery at the CERN Large Hadron Collider of a neutral Higgs boson produced with one bottom quark followed by Higgs decay into a muon pair. We work within the framework of the minimal supersymmetric model. The dominant physics background from the production of $b{\mu }^{+}{\mu }^{-}$, $j{\mu }^{+}{\mu }^{-}$, j=g,u,d,s,c, and $b\bar{b}{W}^{+}{W}^{-}$ is calculated with realistic acceptance cuts. Promising results are found for the CP-odd pseudoscalar ($A^0$) and the heavier CP-even scalar ($H^0$) Higgs bosons with masses up to 600 GeV. This discovery channel with one energetic bottom quark greatly improves the discovery potential of the LHC beyond the inclusive channel $pp\to {\varphi }^0\to {\mu }^{+}{\mu }^{-}+X$.

Comments: Version to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett