Prospects for observing a novel photon-induced $H^-H^+$ production at HL-LHC

Abstract

We study the production of charged scalar boson pairs via photon-induced $H^{-}H^{+}$ in $pp$ collisions at the forthcoming High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC). The predictions are based on the Two-Higgs Doublet Model type-III, since it predicts large branching ratios of the channel decay $H^{\pm}\to \tau^{\pm}\nu_{\tau}$, which is the one we focus on. Motivated by the current excess of events in the process $\mathcal{BR}(t\to H^\pm b)\times \mathcal{BR}(H^\pm\to cb)$ for $M_{H^{\pm}}=130$ GeV, we explore charged Higgs bosons masses $M_{H^{\pm}}$ among 100-150 GeV. According to benchmarks points allowed by experimental constraints, and including a systematic uncertainty of 5$\%$, we obtain for the process of $H^-H^+\to \tau\nu_\tau\tau\nu_\tau\to e\mu+\slashed{E}_T$ a \textit{signal significance} at $5\sigma$ ($3\sigma$) for $M_{H^{\pm}}=100$ GeV ($100\leq M_{H^\pm} \leq 136$ GeV) with 3000 $fb^{-1}$ ($\gtrsim 1000\,fb^{-1}$) integrated luminosity, which would be the last stage foreseen for Large Hadron Collider machine.