LHC discovery potential of the lightest NMSSM Higgs boson in the<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:msub><mml:mi>h</mml:mi><mml:mn>1</mml:mn></mml:msub><mml:mo>→</mml:mo><mml:msub><mml:mi>a</mml:mi><mml:mn>1</mml:mn></mml:msub><mml:msub><mml:mi>a</mml:mi><mml:mn>1</mml:mn></mml:msub><mml:mo>→</mml:mo><mml:mn>4</mml:mn><mml:mi>μ</mml:mi></mml:math>channel

We explore the potential of the Large Hadron Collider to observe the ${h}_{1}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{a}_{1}{a}_{1}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}4\ensuremath{\mu}$ signal from the lightest scalar Higgs boson (${h}_{1}$) decaying into the two lightest pseudoscalar Higgs bosons (${a}_{1}$), followed by their decays into four muons in the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model (NMSSM). The signature under study applies to the region of the NMSSM parameter space in which ${m}_{{a}_{1}}&lt;2{m}_{\ensuremath{\tau}}$, which has not been studied previously. In such a scenario, the suggested strategy of searching for a four-muon signal with the appropriate background suppression would provide a powerful method to discover the lightest $CP$-even and $CP$-odd NMSSM Higgs bosons ${h}_{1}$ and ${a}_{1}$.