Applying Exclusion Likelihoods from LHC Searches to Extended Higgs Sectors

Abstract

LHC searches for non-standard Higgs bosons decaying into tau lepton pairs constitute a sensitive experimental probe for physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM), such as Supersymmetry (SUSY). Recently, the limits obtained from these searches have been presented by the CMS collaboration in a nearly model-independent fashion - as a narrow resonance model - based on the full 8 TeV dataset. In addition to publishing a 95% C.L. exclusion limit, the full likelihood information for the narrow resonance model has been released. This provides valuable information that can be incorporated into global BSM fits. We present a simple algorithm that maps an arbitrary model with multiple neutral Higgs bosons onto the narrow resonance model and derives the corresponding value for the exclusion likelihood from the CMS search. This procedure has been implemented into the public computer code HiggsBounds (version 4.2.0 and higher). We validate our implementation by cross-checking against the official CMS exclusion contours in three Higgs benchmark scenarios in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM), and find very good agreement. Going beyond validation, we discuss the combined constraints of the tau tau search and the rate measurements of the SM-like Higgs at 125 GeV in a recently proposed MSSM benchmark scenario, where the lightest Higgs boson obtains SM-like couplings independently of the decoupling of the heavier Higgs states. Technical details for how to access the likelihood information within HiggsBounds are given in the appendix. The program is available at http://higgsbounds.hepforge.org.