Signature of the charged Higgs decay $H^{\pm} \to Wh^{0}$ with the ATLAS detector

The possibility of detecting the charged Higgs through the process H /sup +or-/ to Wh/sup 0/ is studied with the ATLAS detector. Good reconstruction of the charged Higgs mass is achieved for masses below and above the top-quark mass and the tt background can be suppressed substantially. However, because the signal rates are low, the discovery potential of this channel is limited to a rather narrow area of MSSM parameter space. The results can be applied to other models, for instance, NMSSM where the discovery potential could extend to a significant area of the parameter space. (7 refs).