The Two-Photon Decay Mode of MSSM Higgs Bosons at the Large Hadron Collider

Abstract

At the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the CP-even Higgs bosons ($h^0$ and $H^0$) of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) will be searched for mainly through their two-photon decay. We present a detailed analysis of the production and two-photon decay of the CP-even Higgs bosons of MSSM at the LHC by taking into account all the parameters of the model, especially the bilinear parameter $μ$ and the trilinear supersymmetry breaking parameter $A$. Non-zero values of these parameters lead to significant mixing in the squark sector, and, thus, affect the masses of Higgs bosons through radiative corrections, as well as their couplings to squarks. The dependence of the cross section for the production of Higgs, and its subsequent decay to two photons, on various parameters of the MSSM is described in detail. The cross section times the two-photon branching ratio of $h^0$ is of the order of 15--25~fb in much of the parameter space that remains after imposing the present experimental constraints on the parameters. For the $H^0$, the two-photon branching ratio is only significant if it is light. With a light $H^0$ the cross section times the branching ratio may be 200~fb or more.