Improved prediction for the mass of the W boson in the NMSSM

Abstract

Electroweak precision observables, being highly sensitive to loop contributions of new physics, provide a powerful tool to test the theory and to discriminate between different models of the underlying physics. In that context, the $W$ boson mass, $M_W$, plays a crucial role. The accuracy of the $M_W$ measurement has been significantly improved over the last years, and further improvement of the experimental accuracy is expected from future LHC measurements. In order to fully exploit the precise experimental determination, an accurate theoretical prediction for $M_W$ in the Standard Model (SM) and extensions of it is of central importance. We present the currently most accurate prediction for the $W$ boson mass in the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model (NMSSM), including the full one-loop result and all available higher-order corrections of SM and SUSY type. The evaluation of $M_W$ is performed in a flexible framework, which facilitates the extension to other models beyond the SM. We show numerical results for the $W$ boson mass in the NMSSM, focussing on phenomenologically interesting scenarios, in which the Higgs signal can be interpreted as the lightest or second lightest CP-even Higgs boson of the NMSSM. We find that, for both Higgs signal interpretations, the NMSSM $M_W$ prediction is well compatible with the measurement. We study the SUSY contributions to $M_W$ in detail and investigate in particular the genuine NMSSM effects from the Higgs and neutralino sectors.