Production of Light Higgs Pairs in 2-Higgs Doublet Models via the Higgs-strahlung Process at the LHC

Abstract: At the Large Hadron Collider, we prove the feasibility to detect pair production of the lightest CP-even Higgs boson h of a Type II 2-Higgs Doublet Model through the process q \bar q' --> Vhh (Higgs-strahlung, V=W+-,Z), in presence of two h --> b \bar b decays. We also show that, through such production and decay channels, one has direct access to the following Higgs self-couplings, thus enabling one to distinguish between a standard and the Supersymmetric version of the above model: lambda_(Hhh) -- which constrains the form of the Higgs potential -- as well as lambda_(W+- H+- h) and lambda_(Z A h) -- which are required by gauge invariance. Unfortunately, such claims cannot be extended to the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, where the extraction of the same signals is impossible.