CP-violating supersymmetric Higgs boson at the Tevatron and LHC

Abstract

We analyze the prospect for observing the intermediate neutral Higgs boson (${h}_{2}$) in its decay to two lighter Higgs bosons (${h}_{1}$) at the presently operating hadron colliders in the framework of the $CP$-violating minimal supersymmetric standard model using the PYTHIA event generator. We consider the $\mathrm{\text{lepton}}+4\mathrm{\text{\ensuremath{-}}}\mathrm{\text{jets}}+{\overline{)E}}_{T}$ channel from associate $W{h}_{2}$ production, with $W{h}_{2}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}W{h}_{1}{h}_{1}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}l{\ensuremath{\nu}}_{l}b\overline{b}b\overline{b}$. We require two, three or four tagged $b$ jets. We explicitly consider all relevant standard model backgrounds, treating $c$ jets separately from light flavor and gluon jets and allowing for mistagging. We find that it is very hard to observe this signature at the Tevatron, even with $20\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{fb}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ of data, in the LEP-allowed region of parameter space due to the small signal efficiency, even though the background is manageable. At the LHC, a priori huge standard model backgrounds can be suppressed by applying judiciously chosen kinematical selections. After all cuts, we are left with a signal cross section of around 0.5 fb, and a signal to background ratio between 1.2 and 2.9. According to our analysis this Higgs signal should be viable at the LHC in the vicinity of present LEP exclusion once 20 to $50\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{fb}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ of data have been accumulated at $\sqrt{s}=14\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{TeV}$.