Search for a light NMSSM Higgs boson produced in supersymmetric cascades and decaying into a b-quark pair

A search for a light neutral Higgs boson decaying to a pair of b-quarks, and produced together with at least two very energetic jets and large missing energy, is presented. Such Higgs bosons are conceivable in the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Model (NMSSM), with the Higgs sector characterized by two complex Higgs doublets and an additional Higgs singlet field. This could result in a light Higgs boson with a large singlet component, which would be hard to detect in conventional searches at LEP, LHC and Tevatron, but could be copiously produced in decays of neutralinos in supersymmetric cascades. The data used in this analysis correspond to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 $\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$, collected by the CMS experiment in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of $8\,\text{TeV}$. No indication of a signal is observed. The results are interpreted in terms of cross section limits and within the parameter space of certain NMSSM light Higgs boson scenarios.