The Higgs boson mass as a probe of the minimal supersymmetric standard model

Recently, the LEP collaborations have reported a lower bound on a Standard Model-like Higgs boson of order 89 GeV. We discuss the implications of this bound for the minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model (MSSM). In particular, we show that the lower bound on tan beta, which can be obtained from the presently allowed Higgs boson mass value, becomes stronger than the one set by the requirement of perturbative consistency of the theory up to scales of order M-GUT (associated with the infrared fixed-point solution of the top quark Yukawa coupling) in a large fraction of the allowed parameter space. The potentiality of future LEP2 searches to further probe the MSSM parameter space is also discussed. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.