Search for neutral MSSM Higgs bosons in the fully hadronic di-tau decay channel with the ATLAS detector

The search for additional heavy neutral Higgs bosons predicted in Minimal Supersymmetric Extensions of the Standard Model is presented, using the direct decay channel into two tau leptons which themselves decay hadronically. The study is based on proton-proton collisions recorded in 2011 at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. With a sample size corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $4.5\,\text{fb}^{−1}$, no significant excess above the expected Standard Model background prediction is observed and $\text{CL}_\text{S}$ exclusion limits at a 95% confidence level are evaluated for values of the CP-odd Higgs boson mass mA between 140 GeV to 800 GeV within the context of the $m_\text{h}^{\text{max}}$ and $m^{\text{mod}\pm}_\text{h}$ benchmark scenarios. The results are combined with searches for neutral Higgs h bosons performed using proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector in 2012, with a corresponding integrated luminosity of $19.5\,\text{fb}^{−1}$. The combination allowed an improvement of the exclusion limit at the order of 1 to 3 units in tan β. Within the context of this study, the structure of additional interactions during a single proton-proton collision (the “underlying event”) in di-jet final states is analyzed using collision data at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector in 2010, with a corresponding integrated luminosity of $37\,\text{pb}^{−1}$. The contribution of the underlying event is measured up to an energy scale of 800 GeV and compared to the predictions of various models. For several models, significant deviations compared to the measurements are found and the results are provided for the optimization of simulation algorithms.