The 7 TeV LHC reach for MSSM Higgs bosons

The search for the Higgs boson is entering a decisive phase. The Large Hadron Collider experiments have collected more than 1 fb^-1 of data and are now capable of efficiently probing the high Higgs mass region, mH>140 GeV. The low mass region is more challenging at the LHC, but if the Higgs has standard model-like properties, the LHC should find evidence for it by the end of next year. In low energy supersymmetric extensions of the standard model, the situation is similar for large values of the $CP$-odd Higgs mass mA, but more interesting for lower values of mA. The (√s=7 TeV) LHC searches for a low mass standard model Higgs boson predominantly in the h→γγ, $WW$ decay modes, which may be suppressed by an increase in the h→bb̄, τ⁺τ^- partial widths (and thus the total h width) for mA500 GeV. Although h→bb̄, τ⁺τ^- are sought at the LHC, these channels are not powerful enough to fully counter this suppression in the first year of running. We consider two alternative possibilities for probing the low mA region: nonstandard Higgs boson searches at the LHC, and a statistical combination with the Tevatron, where Vh→bb̄ is the primary search channel for light h. We also study a minimal supersymmetric standard model scenario in which the h→γγ rate is enhanced at low mA to the point where discovery is possible in the near future.