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, h2, 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 h2 in the SM fermionic and bosonic final states in addition to a1a1, h1h1 and Za1 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 h2 signals at the LHC through a variety of decay channels.