Big corrections from a little Higgs -: art. no. 115002

We calculate the tree-level expressions for the electroweak precision observables in the SU(5)/SO(5) littlest Higgs model. The source for these corrections are the exchange of heavy gauge bosons and a triplet Higgs vacuum expectation value (VEV). Weak isospin violating contributions are present because there is no custodial SU(2) global symmetry. The bulk of these weak isospin violating corrections arise from heavy gauge boson exchange while a smaller contribution comes from the triplet Higgs VEV. A global fit is performed to the experimental data and we find that throughout the parameter space the symmetry breaking scale is bounded by f>4 TeV at 95% C.L. Stronger bounds on f are found for generic choices of the high energy gauge couplings. We find that even in the best case scenario one would need fine-tuning of less than a percent to get a Higgs boson mass as light as 200 GeV.