Neutral and Charged Higgs boson phenomenology at the LHeC and FCC-eh

Abstract

We have analyzed the prospects of observing the lightest CP-even neutral Higgs boson (h 1 ) via decays into b b pairs in the neutral and charged current production processes e − q → e − h 1 q and e − q → ν e h 1 q , respectively, at the planned Large Hadron electron Collider (LHeC), with an e − beam energy of 60 GeV and a p beam energy of 7 TeV. We also focus on observing a relatively light charged Higgs boson (h − ) via its production mode e − b → ν e h − b followed by the decays h − → sc + sū at the upcoming Future Circular Collider in hadron-electron mode (FCC-eh) with √ s ≈ 3.5 TeV. We have performed our analysis in the framework of the Nextto-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM) wherein the intermediate Higgs boson (h 2 ) is Standard Model (SM)-like. We have considered constraints from Dark Matter (DM), superparticle and the Higgs boson data. In both analyses, we have carried out signal and background computations with selections optimized to the model at hand and found that in both cases it is possible to get large significances for low mass Higgs bosons.