Discovering the Higgs bosons of minimal supersymmetry with muons and a bottom quark

We investigate the prospects for the discovery at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) of a neutral Higgs boson produced with one bottom quark followed by Higgs decay into a muon pair. We work within the framework of the minimal supersymmetric model. The dominant physics background from the production of b mu(+)mu(-), j mu(+)mu(-), j=g,u,d,s,c, and bbW+W- is calculated with realistic acceptance cuts. Promising results are found for the CP-odd pseudoscalar (A0) and the heavier CP-even scalar (H0) Higgs bosons with masses up to 600 GeV. This discovery channel with one energetic bottom quark greatly improves the discovery potential of the LHC beyond the inclusive channel pp-->phi(0)-->mu(+)mu(-)+X.