Associated production ofCP-odd and charged Higgs bosons at hadron colliders

In the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM), the masses of the charged Higgs boson ${(H}^{\pm })$ and the CP-odd scalar (A) are related by $M_{H^{+}}^2{=M}_A^2{+m}_W^2$ at the Born level. Because the coupling of $W^{-}-A-H^{+}$ is fixed by the gauge interaction, the Born level production rate of $q{q}^{\prime }\to W^{\pm *}\to {\mathrm{AH}}^{\pm }$ depends on only one supersymmetry parameter—the mass ${(M}_A)$ of A. We examine the sensitivity of the CERN LHC to this signal event in the $A(\to b\overline{b}{)H}^{+}(\to {\tau }^{+}{\nu }_{\tau })$ and $A(\to b\overline{b}{)H}^{+}(\to t\overline{b})$ decay channels. We illustrate how to test the mass relation between A and $H^{+}$ in case the signal is found. If the signal is not found, the product of the decay branching ratios of A and $H^{\pm }$ predicted by the MSSM is bounded from above as a function of $M_A.$