Search for high-mass bosons of an extended Higgs sector in b quark final states using the 2017 data set of the CMS experiment

A search for heavy, neutral Higgs bosons produced in association with b quarks and decaying into a pair of b quarks is presented. It is based on LHC Run 2 data, produced at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV in pp collisions and collected by the CMS experiment in 2017, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36.02/fb${}^{-1}$. Several theories beyond the Standard Model predict additional Higgs bosons and, dependingon the specific model, the coupling to b quarks can be significantly enlarged. This is for examplethe case in the minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model (MSSM) and in thetype-II and flipped scenarios of the general Two-Higgs-Doublet Model (2HDM). A dedicated trigger is utilized to select the events for this analysis. At least three highlyenergetic jets are required in the final state. Out of these, the two jets with the largest energycontributions are selected as candidates for the Higgs boson decay and the third one is originatingfrom an associated b quark. The invariant mass of the leading two jets is therefore the mainobservable in this analysis and Higgs boson masses from 300 to 1600 GeV are investigated. To avoid overlap with the complementary semi-leptonic analysis, no muon is required to be present within any final-state jet, leading to an all-hadronic signature. The dominant background contribution consists of heavy-flavor QCD-multi-jet events and is estimated based on a fully data-driven approach. No significant deviation from the background-only prediction of the Standard Model is observed. Therefore, limits on the production cross-section times branching fraction of the signal process are calculated. These limits are translated into the parameter space of several specific models, namely the (m${}_A$, tan $\beta$) plane for MSSM benchmark scenarios and the (cos($\beta$ - $\alpha$), m${}_A$, tan $\beta$) parameter space of 2HDM models.