Exotic Higgs Decay $h\rightarrow\phi\phi\rightarrow 4b$ at the LHeC

Understand

We study the exotic decay of the 125 GeV Higgs boson ($h$) into a pair of light spin-0 particles ($\phi$) which subsequently decays and results in a $4b$ final state.

• This decay mode is well motivated in the Next to Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM) and extended Higgs sector models.
• Instead of searching at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) which are beset by large Standard Model (SM) backgrounds, we investigate this decay channel at the much cleaner Large Hadron Electron Collider (LHeC).
• With some simple selection cuts this channel becomes nearly free of background at this $ep$ machine, in stark contrast with the situation at the (HL-)LHC.