Closing the window on light charged Higgs bosons in the NMSSM (Q1949952)

Summary: In the Next-to-Minimal SuperSymmetric Model (NMSSM) the lightest CP-odd Higgs bosons (\(a_1\)) can be very light. As a consequence, in addition to the standard charged Higgs boson (\(h^{\pm}\)) decays considered in the MSSM for a light charged Higgs (\(m_{h^{\pm}}<m_t\)), the branching fraction for \(h^{\pm}\rightarrow a_1W\) can be dominant. We investigate how this signal can be searched for in \(t\bar{t}\) production at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the case that (\(m_{a_1}\geq 2m_B\)) with the \(a_1\) giving rise to a single \(b\bar{b}\)-jet and discuss to what extent the LHC experiments are able to discover such a scenario with an integrated luminosity \(\sim 20\) \({\text{fb}}^{ - 1}\). We also discuss the implications of the possible Higgs-signal observed at the LHC.