Search for a charged Higgs boson decaying into top and bottom quarks in events with electrons or muons in proton-proton collisions at √s = 13 TeV

Abstract

A search is presented for a charged Higgs boson heavier than the top quark, produced in association with a top quark, or with a top and a bottom quark, and decaying into a top-bottom quark-antiquark pair. The search is performed using proton-proton collision data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb⁻¹. Events are selected by the presence of a single isolated charged lepton (electron or muon) or an opposite-sign dilepton (electron or muon) pair, categorized according to the jet multiplicity and the number of jets identified as originating from b quarks. Multivariate analysis techniques are used to enhance the discrimination between signal and background in each category. The data are compatible with the standard model, and 95% confidence level upper limits of 9.6–0.01 pb are set on the charged Higgs boson production cross section times branching fraction to a top-bottom quark-antiquark pair, for charged Higgs boson mass hypotheses ranging from 200 GeV to 3 TeV. The upper limits are interpreted in different minimal supersymmetric extensions of the standard model.

Description
Keywords
High Energy Physics - Experiment, Hadron-Hadron scattering (experiments), Higgs physics, Supersymmetry
Citation
Sirunyan, A. M., Tumasyan, A., Adam, W., Ambrogi, F., Bergauer, T., Brandstetter, J., Dragicevic, M., Erö, J., Escalante Del Valle, A., Flechl, M., Frühwirth, R., Jeitler, M., Krammer, N., Krätschmer, I., Liko, D., Madlener, T., Mikulec, I., Rad, N., … Woods, N. (2020). Search for a charged Higgs boson decaying into top and bottom quarks in events with electrons or muons in proton-proton collisions at $ \sqrt{\mathrm{s}} $ = 13 TeV. In Journal of High Energy Physics (Vol. 2020, Issue 1). Springer Science and Business Media LLC. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep01(2020)096