A Guidebook to Hunting Charged Higgs Bosons at the LHC

We perform a comprehensive global analysis in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) as well as in the 2-Higgs Doublet Model (2HDM) of the production and decay mechanisms of charged Higgs bosons (H-+/-) at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). We start from accounting for the most recent experimental results (SM-like Higgs boson signal strengths and search limits for new Higgs boson states obtained at Run-1 and -2 of the LHC and previous colliders), from (both direct and indirect) searches for supersymmetric particles as well as from flavor observables (from both e(+)e(-) factories and hadron colliders). We then present precise predictions for H-+/- cross sections and decay rates in different reference scenarios of the two aforementioned models in terms of the parameter space currently available, specifically, mapped over the customary (mA,H +/-,tan beta) planes. These include the mhmod+ and hMSSM configurations of the MSSM and the 2HDM Type-I, -II, -X, and -Y for which we also enforce theoretical constraints, such as vacuum stability, perturbativity, and unitarity. We also define specific Benchmark Points (BPs) which are always close to (or coinciding with) the best fits of the theoretical scenarios to experimental data. We finally briefly discuss the ensuing phenomenology for the purpose of aiding future searches for such charged Higgs boson states.