Production of Scalar Higgs Bosons Associated with Z⁰ Boson at the CERN LHC in the MSSM

We investigate the associated production of a scalar Higgs boson ($h^0$ or $H^0$) with $Z^0$ boson in the minimal supersymmetric extension of the standard model (MSSM) at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC), including the contributions from $b\bar{b}$ annihilation at the tree level and gluon fusion via quark and squark loops. We quantitatively analyze the total cross sections in the mSUGRA scenario. For the production of $h^0$ associated with $Z^0$, we find that in most of the parameter regions, the contributions from initial $b\bar{b}$ and $gg$ are at a level of one percent of the total cross section and therefore almost insignificant. For the production of $H^0$ associated with $Z^0$, the contributions from $b\bar{b}$ channel can be much larger than those from light quark initial states. Especially for large $\tan\beta$, the increment can reach about one order of magnitude. Thus, when considering the associated production of $H^0$ and $Z^0$ at the LHC, the contributions from $b\bar{b}$ annihilation should be taken into account seriously.