Eur. Phys. J. C (2015) 75: 421
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-015-3650-z

Special Article - Tools for Experiment and Theory

Applying exclusion likelihoods from LHC searches to extended Higgs sectors

¹ Physikalisches Institut der Universität Bonn, Nußallee 12, 53115, Bonn, Germany
² Instituto de Física de Cantabria (CSIC-UC), Santander, Spain
³ Department of Physics, The Oskar Klein Centre, Stockholm University, 106 91, Stockholm, Sweden
⁴ Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics (SCIPP), University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, USA
⁵ Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, Notkestraße 85, 22607, Hamburg, Germany

^* e-mail: tistefan@ucsc.edu

Received: 4 August 2015
Accepted: 28 August 2015
Published online: 15 September 2015

Abstract

LHC searches for non-standard Higgs bosons decaying into tau lepton pairs constitute a sensitive experimental probe for physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM), such as supersymmetry (SUSY). Recently, the limits obtained from these searches have been presented by the CMS collaboration in a nearly model-independent fashion – as a narrow resonance model – based on the full dataset. In addition to publishing a exclusion limit, the full likelihood information for the narrow resonance model has been released. This provides valuable information that can be incorporated into global BSM fits. We present a simple algorithm that maps an arbitrary model with multiple neutral Higgs bosons onto the narrow resonance model and derives the corresponding value for the exclusion likelihood from the CMS search. This procedure has been implemented into the public computer code HiggsBounds (version 4.2.0 and higher). We validate our implementation by cross-checking against the official CMS exclusion contours in three Higgs benchmark scenarios in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM), and find very good agreement. Going beyond validation, we discuss the combined constraints of the search and the rate measurements of the SM-like Higgs at in a recently proposed MSSM benchmark scenario, where the lightest Higgs boson obtains SM-like couplings independently of the decoupling of the heavier Higgs states. Technical details for how to access the likelihood information within HiggsBounds are given in the appendix. The program is available at http://higgsbounds.hepforge.org.