A light Higgs Boson would invite Supersymmmetry

Abstract

If the Higgs boson weighs about 115 GeV, the effective potential of the Standard Model becomes unstable above a scale of about 10^6 GeV. This instability may be rectified only by new bosonic particles such as stop squarks. However, avoiding the instability requires fine-tuning of the model couplings, in particular if the theory is not to become non-perturbative before the Planck scale. Such fine-tuning is automatic in a supersymmetric model, but is lost if there are no Higgsinos. A light Higgs boson would be prima facie evidence for supersymmetry in the top-quark and Higgs sectors.

Comments: 11 pages LaTeX, 3 ps figures included