Search for charged Higgs bosons produced in association with a top quark and decaying via H-+/- -> tau nu using pp collision data recorded at root s=13 TeV by the ATLAS detector

Abstract

Charged Higgs bosons produced in association with a single top quark and decaying via H-+/- -> tau nu are searched for with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC, using proton-proton collision data at root s = 13 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.2 fb(-1). The final state is characterised by the presence of a hadronic tau decay and missing transverse momentum, as well as a hadronically decaying top quark, resulting in the absence of high-transverse-momentum electrons and muons. The data are found to be consistent with the expected background from Standard Model processes. A statistical analysis leads to 95% confidence-level upper limits on the production cross section times branching fraction, sigma (pp -> [b]tH(+/-)) x BR(H-+/- -> tau nu), between 1.9 pb and 15 fb, for charged Higgs boson masses ranging from 200 to 2000 GeV. The exclusion limits for this search surpass those obtained with the proton-proton collision data recorded at root s = 8 TeV. C) 2016 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by SCOAP3.