Abstract
The production of a light pseudoscalar Higgs boson in the NMSSM context at the LHC via bottom-quark fusion, bb¯→a1, followed by the a1→τ+τ- decay mode is discussed. We show that there exist some regions of parameter space of the NMSSM in which a low-mass CP-odd Higgs boson can be detected at the high-luminosity LHC via this production mode, provided that tanβ is large enough. Since this production mode has not been studied in the context of the NMSSM so far, we present results for several benchmark points that can be probed by the LHC for extracting the a1 signal. The production of a1 via bottom-quark fusion in the τ+τ- final state can be exploited to measure both the bottom quark and tau lepton Yukawa couplings at the LHC.