Search for a Light Charged Higgs Boson in T → H±b Decays, With H± → Cb, in the Lepton Plus Jets Final State in Proton-Proton Collisions at √s=13 Tev With the Atlas Detector

Abstract

A search for a charged Higgs boson, H-+/-, produced in top-quark decays, t -> H(+/-)b, is presented. The search targets H-+/- decays into a bottom and a charm quark, H-+/- -> cb. The analysis focuses on a selection enriched in top-quark pair production, where one top quark decays into a leptonically decaying W boson and a bottom quark, and the other top quark decays into a charged Higgs boson and a bottom quark. This topology leads to a lepton-plus-jets final state, characterised by an isolated electron or muon and at least four jets. The search exploits the high multiplicity of jets containing b-hadrons, and deploys a neural network classifier that uses the kinematic differences between the signal and the background. The search uses a dataset of proton-proton collisions collected at a centre-of-mass energy root s = 13TeV between 2015 and 2018 with the ATLAS detector at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, amounting to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb(-1). Observed (expected) 95% confidence-level upper limits between 0.15% (0.09%) and 0.42% (0.25%) are derived for the product of branching fractions B( t -> H-+/- b) x B( H +/- -> cb) for charged Higgs boson masses between 60 and 160 GeV, assuming the SM production of the top-quark pairs.