CAN THE HIGGS-BOSON MASS BE ENTIRELY DUE TO RADIATIVE-CORRECTIONS

In the minimal supersymmetric model, the tree-level mass of the lightest CP-even Higgs boson (h0) is zero if the parameters of the potential are chosen such that the minimum lies along a line corresponding to equal vacuum expectation values for the two Higgs doublets. In this case, the mass for the h0 is generated radiatively, and the value of the one-loop-corrected m(h)0 grows as the fourth power of the top-quark mass (and can be as large as 100 GeV for m(t) = 200 GeV). Thus the present negative results of the Higgs-boson search at the CERN e+e- collider LEP cannot rule out a completely radiatively generated Higgs-boson mass.