Higgs bosons in the Standard Model and the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model

Abstract

In these lectures we present a brief review of the Higgs boson sector in the ``Standard Model'', and its Minimal Supersymmetric Extension, with particular emphasis on the main mechanisms for Higgs production and decay at LEP2 and LHC, and theoretical bounds on the Higgs boson masses. In the ``Standard Model'' the effective potential can develop a non-standard minimum for values of the field much larger than the weak scale. Comparison of the decay rate to the non-standard minimum at finite (and zero) temperature with the corresponding expansion rate of the Universe allows to identify the region, in the ($M_H$, $M_t$)-plane which can be accomodated by the theory. In the ``Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model'', approximate analytical expressions for the Higgs mass spectrum and couplings are worked out. An appropriate treatment of squark decoupling allows to consider large values of the stop mixing parameters and thus fix a reliable upper bound on the mass of the lightest CP-even Higgs boson mass. The discovery of the Higgs boson at LEP2 might put an upper bound (below the Planck scale) on the scale of new physics $\Lambda$ and eventually disentangle between the Standard Model and the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model.