Higgs boson plus photon production at the LHC: a clean probe of the b-quark parton densities

Understand

Higgs boson production in association with a high pT photon at the CERN Large Hadron Collider is analyzed, in the framework of the MSSM model, for the heavier neutral Higgs bosons.

• The request of an additional photon in the exclusive Higgs boson final state selects b-quark pairs among the possible initial partonic states, since gluon-gluon initial states are not allowed by C-parity conservation.
• Hence, the measurement of cross sections for neutral Higgs boson plus photon production can provide a clean probe of the b-quark density in the proton as well as of the b-quark Yukawa coupling.
• The suppression of the production rates by the b-quark electromagnetic coupling can be compensated by the enhanced Higgs boson Yukawa coupling to b's in the large tan(beta) regime.