Abstract
Phys.Rev.D84:015014,2011 We study the detectability of the lightest CP-odd Higgs boson of the NMSSM,
$a_1$, at the LHC through its production in association with a bottom-quark
pair followed by the $a_1\to b\bar b$ decay. It is shown that, for large
$\tan\beta$ and very high luminosity of the LHC, there exist regions of the
NMSSM parameter space that can be exploited to detect the $a_1$ through this
channel. This signature is a characteristic feature of the NMSSM in comparison
to the MSSM, as $a_1$ masses involved are well below those allowed in the MSSM
for the corresponding CP-odd Higgs state.