https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-018-5543-4
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Impact of 
-violating interference effects on MSSM Higgs searches
1
Department of Particle Physics and Astrophysics, Weizmann Institute of Science, 76100, Rehovot, Israel
2
DESY, Notkestr. 85, 22607, Hamburg, Germany
* e-mail: elina.fuchs@weizmann.ac.il
Received:
18
May
2017
Accepted:
13
January
2018
Published online:
30
January
2018
Interference and mixing effects between neutral Higgs bosons in the MSSM with complex parameters are shown to have a significant impact on the interpretation of LHC searches for additional Higgs bosons. Complex MSSM parameters introduce mixing between the -even and -odd Higgs states h, H, A into the mass eigenstates 
and generate -violating interference terms. Both effects are enhanced in the case of almost degenerate states. Employing as an example an extension of a frequently used benchmark scenario by a non-zero phase 
, the interference contributions are obtained for the production of neutral Higgs bosons in gluon-fusion and in association with b-quarks followed by the decay into a pair of 
-leptons. While the resonant mixing increases the individual cross sections for the two heavy Higgs bosons 
and 
, strongly destructive interference effects between the contributions involving and leave a considerable parameter region unexcluded that would appear to be ruled out if the interference effects were neglected.
© The Author(s), 2018
