The second lightest CP-even Higgs boson signals in the NMSSM at the LHC

Abstract

We study the signal rates of the second lightest CP-even Higgs boson, h 2 , of the NMSSM produced in gluon fusion, in association with bottom quarks and in association with top quarks, which is not the SM-like Higgs boson, at the LHC. We evaluate the production rates of h 2 in the SM fermionic and bosonic final states in addition to a 1 a 1 , h 1 h 1 and Za 1 final states. It is observed that the size of the signal rates in some regions of the NMSSM parameter space is quite large and that could help extracting h 2 signals at the LHC through a variety of decay channels.