Implications of a 125 GeV Higgs for supersymmetric models

TL;DR

The paper discusses the implications of a potential 125 GeV Higgs boson discovery for various supersymmetric models, showing that many scenarios could be constrained or excluded based on this mass range.

Contribution

It analyzes how a Higgs mass around 125 GeV impacts the viability of different MSSM and other supersymmetric models, highlighting which are favored or disfavored.

Findings

Several MSSM scenarios would be excluded or restricted.

Minimal anomaly and gauge mediated models predict too light a Higgs and are disfavored.

Heavy supersymmetric particle models could also be constrained.

Abstract

Preliminary results of the search for a Standard Model like Higgs boson at the LHC with 5 fb-1 data have just been presented by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations and an excess of events at a mass of ~125 GeV has been reported. If this excess of events is confirmed by further searches with more data, it will have extremely important consequences in the context of supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model and, in particular the minimal one, the MSSM. We show that for a standard-like Higgs boson with a mass 123 < M_h < 127 GeV, several unconstrained or constrained (i.e. with soft supersymmetry-breaking parameters unified at the high scale) MSSM scenarios would be excluded, while the parameters of some other scenarios would be severely restricted. Examples of constrained MSSM scenarios which would be disfavoured as they predict a too light Higgs particle are the minimal anomaly and gauge mediated supersymmetry breaking models. The gravity mediated constrained MSSM would still be viable, provided the scalar top quarks are heavy and their trilinear coupling large. Significant areas of the parameter space of models with heavy supersymmetric particles, such as split or high-scale supersymmetry, could also be excluded as, in turn, they generally predict a too heavy Higgs particle.