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 MSS. 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 λ at MSS. In the MSSM, the latter is fixed to a semi-positive value and, thus, sets an upper bound on the SUSY-breaking scale near MSS ≃ 1010 GeV. In the NMSSM, λ(MSS) receives an additional contribution induced by the singlet which allows for negative values of λ(MSS). In turn, for the measured value of the Higgs mass we find that MSS 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.