Production of charged Higgs bosons of the minimal supersymmetric standard model in b-quark-initiated processes at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

We study integrated and differential rates for the production of charged Higgs bosons H± of the minimal supersymmetric standard model via b-quark-initiated subprocesses in pp collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. In detail, we compute cross sections and distributions of the reactions bU→bDH+→bDτ+ντ circle-plus c.c. and bU→bDH+→bDt bar b→bDb bar bjj circle-plus c.c., for a H± scalar in the intermediate (i.e., M±mt+mb) mass range, respectively (U and D represent generic u- and d-type light quarks). In the former case, charged Higgs boson masses up to about 145 GeV can be covered for both large and small tanβ close-quote s. In the latter case, charged scalars can be detected for values of MH± up to about 500 GeV, especially if tanβ is large, and provided that either excellent b-tagging performances can be achieved or the high luminosity option becomes available. copyright 1997 The American Physical Society