Moderately light charged Higgs in \cp MSSM and NMSSM

Abstract

In this talk I discuss some aspects of the phenomenology of a moderately light charged Higgs ($H^\pm$) with a mass $\gts 130$ GeV, lighter than the top quark, at the LHC. A charged Higgs in this mass range is still allowed in next-to-minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM) at low $\tan \beta$ as well as in CP-violating (\cp) Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) for a certain choice of \cp parameters, still respecting all the LEP-II bounds. In both the cases, the $H^\pm$ has a large branching ratio in the $W^\pm \phi$ channel, where $\phi$ denotes a generic Higgs which is dominantly pseudoscalar and hence may be substantially lighter than the LEP-II mass bound. This $\phi$ decays dominantly into a $b \bar b$ pair. Thus production of $H^\pm$ in the top decay gives a striking $t \bar t$ signal at the LHC, where one of the top quarks decays into the $bb \bar b W$ channel, via $t \to b H^\pm, H^\pm \to \phi$ and $\phi \to b \bar b$. The characteristic correlation between the $b \bar b$, $b \bar b W$ and $b b \bar b W$ invariant mass peaks helps reduce the Standard Model (SM) background very effectively. For these low values of $\tan \beta$ the $H^\pm \to \tau \nu_\tau $ channel does not provide any reach for the $H^\pm$. Thus this is a signal for both a light charged $H^\pm$ and a light $\phi$, which is mostly pseudoscalar in nature and decays dominantly into a $b \bar b$ pair.