PRODUCTION AND 2-PHOTON DECAY OF THE MSSM SCALAR HIGGS BOSONS AT THE LHC

We consider the production and two-photon decay of the CP-even Higgs b osons (h(0) and H-0) of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSS M) at the Large Hadron Collider. We study in detail the dependence of the cross section on various parameters of the MSSM, especially the de pendence on the mixing effects in the squark sector due to the Higgs b ilinear parameter mu and the soft supersymmetry breaking parameter A. We find that the cross section for the production of these Higgs boson s has a significant dependence on the parameters which determine the c hiral mixing in the squark sector. The cross section times the two-pho ton branching ratio of h(0) is of the order of 15-25 fb in much of the parameter space that remains after imposing the present experimental constraints. For the H-0 the two-photon branching ratio is only signif icant if the H-0 is light, but then the cross section times the branch ing ratio may exceed 200 fb. The QCD corrections due to quark loop con tributions are known to increase the cross section by 50%. We find the dependence of the cross section on the gluon distribution function us ed to be rather insignificant.