Search for neutral MSSM Higgs bosons decaying to a pair of tau leptons in pp collisions
Austrian Federal Ministry of Science ; Research and Economy and the Austrian Science Fund ; Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique ; Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek ; Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) ; Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) ; Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ) ; Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) ; Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science ; CERN ; Chinese Academy of Sciences ; Ministry of Science and Technology ; National Natural Science Foundation of China ; Colombian Funding Agency (COLCIENCIAS) ; Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sport ; Croatian Science Foundation ; Research Promotion Foundation, Cyprus ; Ministry of Education and Research ; Estonian Research Council ; European Regional Development Fund, Estonia ; Academy of Finland ; Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture ; Helsinki Institute of Physics ; Institut National de Physique Nucleaire et de Physique des Particules / CNRS ; Commissariat a l' Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives / CEA, France ; Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forschung ; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Germany ; Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Deutscher Forschungszentren, Germany ; General Secretariat for Research and Technology, Greece ; National Scientific Research Foundation ; National Innovation Office, Hungary ; Department of Atomic Energy and the Department of Science and Technology, India ; Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, Iran ; Science Foundation, Ireland ; Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Italy ; Korean Ministry of Education, Science and Technology ; World Class University program of NRF, Republic of Korea ; Lithuanian Academy of Sciences ; Ministry of Education ; University of Malaya (Malaysia) ; Mexican Funding Agency CINVESTAV ; Mexican Funding Agency CONACYT ; Mexican Funding Agency SEP ; Mexican Funding Agency UASLP-FAI ; Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, New Zealand ; Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission ; Ministry of Science and Higher Education ; National Science Centre, Poland ; Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia, Portugal ; JINR, Dubna ; Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation ; Federal Agency of Atomic Energy of the Russian Federation ; Russian Academy of Sciences ; Russian Foundation for Basic Research ; Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of Serbia ; Secretaria de Estado de Investigacion ; Desarrollo e Innovacion and Programa Consolider-Ingenio, Spain ; Swiss Funding Agency ETH Board ; Swiss Funding Agency ETH Zurich ; Swiss Funding Agency PSI ; Swiss Funding Agency SNF ; Swiss Funding Agency UniZH ; Swiss Funding Agency Canton Zurich ; Swiss Funding Agency SER ; Ministry of Science and Technology, Taipei ; Thailand Center of Excellence in Physics ; Institute for the Promotion of Teaching Science and Technology of Thailand, Special Task Force for Activating Research ; National Science and Technology Development Agency of Thailand ; Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey ; Turkish Atomic Energy Authority ; National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine ; State Fund for Fundamental Researches, Ukraine ; Science and Technology Facilities Council, U. K. ; US Department of Energy ; US National Science Foundation ; Marie-Curie programme ; European Research Council ; EPLANET (European Union) ; Leventis Foundation ; A. P. Sloan Foundation ; Alexander von Humboldt Foundation ; Belgian Federal Science Policy Office ; Fonds pour la Formation a la Recherche dans l'Industrie et dans l'Agriculture (FRIA-Belgium) ; Agentschap voor Innovatie door Wetenschap en Technologie (IWT-Belgium) ; Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MEYS) of the Czech Republic ; Council of Science and Industrial Research, India ; HOMING PLUS programme of Foundation for Polish Science ; European Union, Regional Development Fund ; Compagnia di San Paolo (Torino) ; Consorzio per la Fisica (Trieste) ; MIUR project (Italy) ; Thalis and Aristeia programmes ; EU-ESF ; Greek NSRF ; National Priorities Research Program by Qatar National Research Fund ; Estonian Research CouncilIUT23-4 ; Estonian Research CouncilIUT23-6 ; MIUR project (Italy)20108T4XTM ; A search for neutral Higgs bosons in the minimal supersymmetric extension of the standard model (MSSM) decaying to tau-lepton pairs in pp collisions is performed, using events recorded by the CMS experiment at the LHC. The dataset corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 24.6 fb(-1), with 4.9 fb(-1) at 7TeV and 19.7 fb(-1) at 8TeV. To enhance the sensitivity to neutral MSSM Higgs bosons, the search includes the case where the Higgs boson is produced in association with a b-quark jet. No excess is observed in the tau-lepton-pair invariant mass spectrum. Exclusion limits are presented in the MSSM parameter space for different benchmark scenarios, m(h)(max), m(h)(mod+), m(h)(mod-), light-stop, light-stau, T-phobic, and low-m(H). Upper limits on the cross section times branching fraction for gluon fusion and b-quark associated Higgs boson production are also given.