Naturalness bounds in extensions of the MSSM without a light Higgs boson

TL;DR

This paper investigates how extensions of the MSSM can accommodate a heavier Higgs boson up to 350 GeV while remaining consistent with data and naturalness, highlighting the implications for the theory's regime and scale.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of MSSM extensions with additional tree-level contributions to the Higgs mass, focusing on naturalness and experimental bounds.

Findings

Heavier Higgs bosons up to 350 GeV can be compatible with data.

Naturalness constraints often require a low scale for soft term generation.

Models undergo a regime change at relatively low energy scales.

Abstract

Adopting a bottom-up point of view, we make a comparative study of the simplest extensions of the MSSM with extra tree level contributions to the lightest Higgs boson mass. We show to what extent a relatively heavy Higgs boson, up to 200-350 GeV, can be compatible with data and naturalness. The price to pay is that the theory undergoes some change of regime at a relatively low scale. Bounds on these models come from electroweak precision tests and naturalness, which often requires the scale at which the soft terms are generated to be relatively low.