The 7 TeV LHC Reach for MSSM Higgs Bosons

Understand

The search for the Higgs boson is entering a decisive phase.

• The Large Hadron Collider experiments have collected more than 1 fb$^{-1}$ of data and are now capable of efficiently probing the high Higgs mass region, $m_H > 140$ GeV.
• The low mass region is more challenging at the LHC, but if the Higgs has Standard Model (SM)-like properties, the LHC should find evidence for it by the end of next year.
• In low energy supersymmetric extensions of the SM, the situation is similar for large values of the CP-odd Higgs mass $m_A$, but more interesting for lower values of $m_A$.