Search for neutral Higgs bosons decaying into four taus at LEP2

A search for the production and non-standard decay of a Higgs boson, h, into four taus through intermediate pseudoscalars, a, is conducted on 683 pb−1 of data collected by the ALEPH experiment at centre-of-mass energies from 183 to 209 GeV. No excess of events above background is observed, and exclusion limits are placed on the combined production cross section times branching ratio, $ {ξ^2} = {{σ ( {{e⁺ }{e⁻ } → {Zh}} )}}{{{σSM}( {{e⁺ }{e⁻ } → {Zh}} )}} × B( {h → {aa}} ) × B{( {{a} → {τ⁺ }{τ⁻ }} )^2} $ . For m h < 107 GeV/c 2 and 4 < m a < 10 GeV/c 2, ξ 2 > 1 is excluded at the 95% confidence level.