LHC discovery potential of the lightest NMSSM Higgs in the h1 -> a1 a1 -> 4 muons channel

Abstract

We explore the potential of the Large Hadron Collider to observe the h1 -> a1 a1 -> 4 muons signal from the lightest scalar Higgs boson (h1) decaying into the two lightest pseudoscalar Higgs bosons (a1), followed by their decays into four muons in the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM). The signature under study applies to the region of the NMSSM parameter space in which m_a1 < 2 m_tau, which has not been studied previously. In such a scenario, the suggested strategy of searching for a four-muon signal with the appropriate background suppression would provide a powerful method to discover the lightest CP-even and CP-odd NMSSM Higgs bosons h1 and a1.