Search for a Higgs boson decaying into a b-quark pair and produced in association with b quarks in proton–proton collisions at 7 TeV

A search for a neutral Higgs boson decaying to a pair of b quarks, and produced in association with at least one additional b quark, is presented. Multijet final states with three jets identified as originating from b quarks, at least one of which may include a non-isolated muon, are studied. The data used in this analysis correspond to an integrated luminosity of 2.7-4.8 inverse femtobarns, collected by the CMS experiment in proton-proton collisions at the LHC at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV. This search is particularly sensitive to Higgs bosons in scenarios of the Minimal Supersymmetric Model (MSSM) with large values of tan$\beta$. No excess over the predicted background from standard model processes is observed. Stringent upper limits on cross section times branching fraction are derived and interpreted as bounds in the MSSM tan$\beta$ and $m_A$ parameter-space. Observed 95% confidence level upper limits reach as low as tan$\beta$ $\approx$ 18 for $M_A \approx$ 100 GeV.