Eur. Phys. J. C 19, 143-154
DOI: 10.1007/s100520100550

Signatures of MSSM charged Higgs bosons via chargino-neutralino decay channels at the LHC

M. Bisset¹, M. Guchait² and S. Moretti<sup>3

1</sup>  Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, 100084 Beijing, P.R. China
²  DESY Theorie, Notkestrasse 85, 22603 Hamburg, Germany
³  Particle Physics Department, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, Oxon OX11 0QX, UK

bisset@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn
guchait@mail.desy.de
stefano.moretti@cern.ch

(Received: 21 October 2000 / Published online: 23 February 2001 -© Springer-Verlag 2001 )

Abstract
We assess the potential of detecting a charged Higgs boson of the MSSM at the LHC via its decays into a chargino and a neutralino. We focus our attention on the region of parameter space with and , where identification of the via other decay modes has proven to be ineffective. Searching for means to plug this hole, we simulate the decays and -the former can yield a single hard lepton (from the chargino decay) while the latter can yield three leptons (from the chargino and neutralino decays). Coupled with the dominant top quark + charged Higgs boson production mode, the resulting signature is one or three hard, isolated leptons, substantial missing transverse momentum and a reconstructed (via a 3-jet invariant mass) top quark. The single lepton channel is swamped by background processes; however, with suitable cuts, a trilepton signal emerges. While such a signal suffers from a low number of surviving events (after cuts) and is dependent on several MSSM input parameters (notably , , and slepton masses), it does fill at least some of the void left by previous investigations.

© Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag 2001