H+H− Pair Production at the Large Hadron Collider

We study the pair production of charged Higgs bosons at the CERN Large Hadron Collider in the context of the minimal supersymmetric extension of the standard model. We compare the contributions due to qq̄ annihilation at the tree level and gg fusion, which proceeds at one loop. At small or large values of tanβ, H+H− production proceeds dominantly via bb̄ annihilation, due to Feynman diagrams involving neutral CP-even Higgs bosons and top quarks, which come in addition to the usually considered Drell-Yan diagrams. In the case of gg fusion, the squark loop contributions may considerably enhance the well-known quark loop contributions. PACS numbers: 12.60.Jv, 13.85.-t, 14.80.Cp ∗Permanent address: II. Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Hamburg, Luruper Chaussee 149, 22761 Hamburg, Germany.