The Higgs mass and the scale of SUSY breaking in the NMSSM

In this letter we study the Higgs mass in the NMSSM with supersymmetry breaking at high scales M-SS. With the Standard Model as the effective low energy theory, the computation of the Higgs mass relies on the matching condition of the quartic coupling lambda at M-SS. In the MSSM, the latter is fixed to a semi-positive value and, thus, sets an upper bound on the SUSY-breaking scale near M-SS similar or equal to 10(10) GeV. In the NMSSM, lambda(M-SS) receives an additional contribution induced by the singlet which allows for negative values of lambda(M-SS). In turn, for the measured value of the Higgs mass we find that M-SS can take any value up to the GUT scale. Furthermore, the choice of universal soft terms favors SUSY-breaking scales close to the GUT scale.