Search for a Charged Higgs Boson Produced in the Vector-Boson Fusion Mode with Decay H$\pm$ →W$\pm$Z using pp Collisions at s =8TeV with the ATLAS Experiment

A search for a charged Higgs boson, H$\pm$, decaying to a W$\pm$ boson and a Z boson is presented. The search is based on 20.3fb-1 of proton-proton collision data at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The H$\pm$ boson is assumed to be produced via vector-boson fusion and the decays W$\pm$→qq′¯ and Z→e+e-/μ+μ- are considered. The search is performed in a range of charged Higgs boson masses from 200 to 1000 GeV. No evidence for the production of an H$\pm$ boson is observed. Upper limits of 31-1020 fb at 95\% C.L. are placed on the cross section for vector-boson fusion production of an H$\pm$ boson times its branching fraction to W$\pm$Z. The limits are compared with predictions from the Georgi-Machacek Higgs triplet model. \copyright 2015 CERN, for the ATLAS Collaboration.