SUSY Higgs boson flavor-changing neutral currents at the LHC

Abstract

We compute and analyze the Flavor-Changing Neutral Current (FCNC) interactions of Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model Higgs bosons (h = h0, H0, A0) with heavy quarks (top and bottom), focusing on the strongly-interacting sector. We correlate the Higgs bosons production cross-section at the LHC with the FCNC decay branching ratios and find the maximum allowed values of the production rates, sigma(pp -> h -> qq') = sigma(pp -> h) x B(h -> qq') (qq'= tc or bs) after taking into account limits from low energy data on flavor-changing interactions. We single out the top channel, with a maximum production rate of sigma^max(pp -> h -> tc) =~ 10^-3 - 10^-2 pb, as the most promising FCNC channel to be detected at the LHC.