Data-driven estimation of the background to charged Higgs boson searches using hadronically-decaying tau final states in ATLAS

The experimental observation of charged Higgs bosons, $H^{\pm}$, which are theoretically predicted by many non-minimal Higgs scenarios, would indicate new physics beyond the Standard Model. In the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, for example, the dominant production mode at the LHC for these Higgs bosons, when $m_{H^+} < m_t$, takes place in $t\overline{t}$ events via the top-quark decay $t\rightarrow H^{+}b$ with $H^{+}\rightarrow\tau \nu$ dominating for most values of $\tan\beta$. Two channels with a hadronically decaying $\tau$ coming from the charged Higgs boson are studied. The delivery of the first 37 pb$^{-1}$ of $\sqrt{s}=7$ TeV collision data allows many significant backgrounds to be estimated with data-driven methods, which represent the primary focus of this note and a crucial step towards ATLAS searches for the charged Higgs boson.