Interference of Higgs boson resonances in mu^+ mu^- - neutralino_i neutralino_j with longit.pdf

a r X i v : h e p - p h / 0 4 0 7 0 5 7 v 2 2 1 O c t 2 0 0 4 WUE-ITP-2004-014 hep-ph/0407057 Interference of Higgs boson resonances in μ+μ? → χ?0i χ?0j with longitudinal beam polarization H. Fraas, F. von der Pahlen, C. Sachse Institut fu?r Theoretische Physik, Universita?t Wu?rzburg, Am Hubland, D-97074 Wu?rzburg, Germany Abstract We study the interference of resonant Higgs boson exchange in neutralino production in μ+μ? annihilation with longitudinally polarized beams. We use the energy distribution of the decay lepton in the process χ?0j → ?±??? to determine the polarization of the neutralinos. In the CP conserving Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model a non-vanishing asymmetry in the lepton energy spectrum is caused by the interference of Higgs boson exchange chan- nels with different CP eigenvalues. The contribution of this interference is large if the heavy neutral bosons H and A are nearly degenerate. We show that the asymmetry can be used to determine the couplings of the neutral Higgs bosons to the neutralinos. In particular, the asymmetry allows to de- termine the relative phase of the couplings. We find large asymmetries and cross sections for a set of reference scenarios with nearly degenerate neutral Higgs bosons. 1 1 Introduction At a muon collider, neutral Higgs bosons are produced as s-channel resonances in μ+μ? annihilation [1, 2, 3]. Therefore a muon collider is an excellent tool to study the properties of a heavy scalar or pseudoscalar neutral Higgs boson. The CP conserving Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) contains three neutral Higgs bosons, a light scalar h, a heavier scalar H , and a pseudoscalar A. Since the two heavier neutral Higgs bosons may decay into neutralinos a muon collider opens the possibility to test supersymmetry through the interaction of the Higgs sector with the neutralino sector. Neutralinos, the supersymmetric partners of the neutral Higgs and gauge bosons, are expected to be light in large regions of the su