A search for a light neutral Higgs boson decaying into a pair of b quarks is presented. Such Higgs bosons are predicted by certain scenarios of the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM), whose Higgs sector has two complex Higgs doublets and an additional Higgs singlet. If the lightest Higgs boson has a sizeable singlet admixture, it may have escaped detection in previous searches at LEP, Tevatron,and LHC, but could be produced at a substantial rate in neutralino decays within

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... ersymmetric cascades. This analysis is the first search for Higgs bosons in the mass range below 100 GeV in the b-quark final state at the LHC. It uses a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 fb−1, which has been recorded by the CMS experiment in 2012 at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV. Events with a pair of b-tagged jets, at least two very energetic jets, and large missing energy are selected. The invariant mass of the two selected b-tagged jets is used to extract the signal. The observed invariant-mass spectrum is in good agreement with the background expected from Standard-Model processes. The results are interpreted in terms of cross-section limits and within light-Higgs-boson scenarios of the NMSSM. The modified P4 benchmark scenario of the NMSSM is excluded by this analysis.