Associated production of the Higgs boson and a single top quark at hadron colliders

We study the production of the Higgs boson in association with a single top quark at hadron colliders. The cross sections for the three production processes (t channel, s channel, and W associated) at both the Fermilab Tevatron and the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are presented. We investigate the possibility of detecting a signal for the largest of these processes, the t-channel process at the LHC, via the Higgs boson decay into bb̅ . The QCD backgrounds are large and difficult to curb, hindering the extraction of the signal. Extensions of our analysis to the production of supersymmetric Higgs bosons are also addressed. The cross section is enhanced for large values of tanβ, increasing the prospects for extracting a signal.