Higgs bosons at the LHC: Production and decay into electroweak gauge bosons

The search for Higgs bosons or, more general, (spin-zero) resonances is among the major physics goals of present-day collider physics, as the existence of such resonances and the exploration of their properties (production and decay modes, quantum numbers) would yield decisive clues for unraveling the mechanism of electroweak gauge symmetry breaking (EWSB). By taking experimental and theoretical constraints into account, we analyze and compute, within a number of standard model (SM) extensions, the cross sections σφ→VV' for the production of a heavy neutral scalar/pseudoscalar Higgs boson/spinzero resonance at the LHC and its subsequent decays into electroweak gauge bosons. Special emphasis is laid on the complex MSSM (cMSSM) where CP-violating effects are induced by complex parameters in the Higgs potential that enter via loop corrections. They induce a mixing between the CP-eigenstates h,H and A; these mixed states are denoted by hi.