The Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM)

The structure of the MSSM is reviewed. We first motivate the particle content of the theory by examining the quantum numbers of the known standard model particles and by the requirement of anomaly cancellation. Once the particle content is fixed we can write down the most general renormalizable superpotential. However such a superpotential will contain terms breaking lepton and baryon number which leads us to the concept of R-parity conservation. The question of supersymmetry breaking is discussed next. We list the possible soft breaking terms. However the Lagrangian involving the most general soft breaking terms is phenomenologically intractable because of the appearance of the many new parameters. It also leads to some unacceptable predictions. To reduce the number of parameters we restrict ourself to the case with universal soft breaking terms at the GUT scale. We motivate the need for universal soft breaking terms by the apparent unification of gauge couplings in the MSSM and by the absence of flavor changing neutral currents. Then we discuss radiative electroweak symmetry breaking. Radiative breaking arises because the one loop corrections involving the large top Yukawa coupling change the sign of the soft breaking mass parameter of the up-type Higgs doublet, this way introducing a nontrivial minimum in the Higgs potential. Finally we give an overview of the possible mixings in the MSSM and enumerate the physical (mass eigenstate) fields together with the mass matrices. Supported in part by the DOE under cooperative agreement # DE-FC02-94ER40818.