Higgs scalar-pseudoscalar mixing in the minimal supersymmetric Standard Model

In the minimal supersymmetric Standard Model, the heaviest CP-even Higgs boson H and the CP-odd Higgs scalar A are predicted to be almost degenerate in mass at the tree level, for the wide kinematic range M-A > 2M(Z) and tan beta greater than or equal to 2. However, if large soft-CP-violating Yukawa interactions involving scalar quarks of the third generation are present in the theory, then the CP invariance of the Higgs potential can be maximally broken beyond the Born approximation, and the high degree of mass degeneracy between H and A may be lifted through a sizeable HA mixing. After taking the CP-odd tadpole renormalization of the A boson into account, we find that the small mass difference M-H - M-A, which is about 1% of the A-boson mass at the tree level, can be substantially enhanced to the 25% level at the one-loop order. We also find that the loop-induced mixing between the lightest CP-even Higgs boson h and the A boson may be of comparable size to M-A. We briefly discuss the main phenomenological implications of the predicted hA and HA mixings for the general Higgs-boson mass spectrum and for CP-violating observables at collider and lower energies. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.