Search for a heavy charged Higgs boson decaying into a <i>W</i> boson and a Higgs boson in final states with leptons and <i>b</i>-jets in √s=13 TeV <i>pp</i> collisions with the ATLAS detector

Abstract

<p>This article presents a search for a heavy charged Higgs boson produced in association with a top quark and a bottom quark, and decaying into a <em>W</em> boson and a 125 GeV Higgs boson <em>h</em>. The search is performed in final states with one charged lepton, missing transverse momentum, and jets using proton-proton collision data at = 13 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector during Run 2 of the LHC at CERN. This data set corresponds to a total integrated luminosity of 140 fb^{<em>−</em>1}. The search is conducted by examining the reconstructed invariant mass distribution of the <em>Wh</em> candidates for evidence of a localised excess in the charged Higgs boson mass range from 250 GeV to 3 TeV. No significant excess of data over the expected background is observed and 95% confidence-level upper limits between 2.8 pb and 1.2 fb are placed on the production cross-section times branching ratio for charged Higgs bosons decaying into <em>Wh</em>.<br></p>