Associated charged Higgs and $W$ boson production in the MSSM at the CERN large hadron collider

Abstract

We investigate the viability of observing charged Higgs bosons (\(H^\pm\)) produced in association with \(W\) bosons at the CERN large hadron collider, using the leptonic decay \(H^+ \to\tau^+ \nu_\tau\) and hadronic \(W\) decay, within different scenarios of the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) with both real and complex parameters. Performing a parton level study we show how the irreducible standard model background from \(W+2\) jets can be controlled by applying appropriate cuts and find that the size of a possible signal depends on the cuts needed to suppress QCD backgrounds and misidentifications. In the standard maximal mixing scenario of the MSSM we find a viable signal for large \(\tan\beta\) and intermediate \(H^\pm\) masses (\({\sim} m_t\)) when using softer cuts (\(p_{\perp\text{miss}}\), \(p_{\perp\tau{\text{jet}}} >\) 50 GeV), whereas for harder cuts (\(p_{\perp\text{miss}}\), \(p_{\perp\tau{\text{jet}}} >\) 100 GeV) we only find a viable signal for very large \(\tan\beta\) (\(\gtrsim50\)). We have also investigated a special class of MSSM scenarios with large mass splittings among the heavy Higgs bosons where the cross-section can be resonantly enhanced by factors up to one hundred, with a strong dependence on the \(CP\)-violating phases. Even so we find that the signal after cuts remains small except for small masses (\({\lesssim} m_t\)) when using the softer cuts. Finally, in all the scenarios we have investigated we have only found small \(CP\)-asymmetries.