Charged Higgs boson in the W± Higgs channel at the Large Hadron Collider

Abstract

In light of the recent discovery of a neutral Higgs boson, Hobs, with a mass near 125 GeV, we reassess the LHC discovery potential of a charged Higgs boson, H±, in the W±Hobs decay channel. This decay channel can be particularly important for a H± heavier than the top quark, when it is produced through the pp→tH± process. The knowledge of the mass of Hobs provides an additional handle in the kinematic selection when reconstructing a Breit–Wigner resonance in the Hobs→bb¯ decay channel. We consider some extensions of the Standard Model Higgs sector, with and without supersymmetry, and perform a dedicated signal-to-background analysis to test the scope of this channel for the LHC running at the design energy (14 TeV), for 300 fb−1 (standard) and 3000 fb−1 (high) integrated luminosities. We find that, while this channel does not show much promise for a supersymmetric H± state, significant portions of the parameter spaces of several two-Higgs doublet models are testable.