Screening of large exotic scales in the light Higgs-boson mass bound for a general class of supersymmetric models.

Abstract

We consider the class of supersymmetric models whose Higgs sector contains a "conventional" pair of $\mathrm{SU}{(2)}_{L}$ doublets and an arbitrary number of extra "exotic" $\mathrm{SU}{(2)}_{L}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}\mathrm{U}{(1)}_{Y}$ neutral Higgs singlets (possibly related to an extra symmetry group $G$), with a priori arbitrarily large vacuum expectation values (VEV's). We show that, as a consequence of the functional structure of the scalar potential (dictated by gauge and supersymmetry invariance), a general property exists in the scalar mass matrix which decouples the lightest Higgs-boson mass from the large VEV effects at the tree level. At one loop, we show that, if the fermion-sfermion sector is considered, the analogous property "screens" the lightest Higgs-boson mass under very general assumptions for the symmetry-breaking mechanism.