Search for heavy neutral Higgs bosons produced in association with 
b
-quarks and decaying into 
b
-quarks at 
s=13  TeV
 with the ATLAS detector
A search for heavy neutral Higgs bosons produced in association with one or two b -quarks and decaying to b -quark pairs is presented using 27 . 8 fb − 1 of ﬃﬃﬃ s p ¼ 13 TeV proton-proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider during 2015 and 2016. No evidence of a signal is found. Upper limits on the heavy neutral Higgs boson production cross section times its branching ratio to b ¯ b are set, ranging from 4.0 to 0.6 pb at 95% confidence level over a Higgs boson mass range of 450 to 1400 GeV. Results are interpreted within the two-Higgs-doublet model and the minimal supersymmetric Standard Model.