A Supersymmetric Explanation of the Excess of Higgs–Like Events at LEP

Searches for the Standard Model Higgs boson by the four LEP experiments found excess events in two mass ranges: a 2.3σ excess around 98 GeV, and an 1.7σ excess around 115 GeV. The latter has been discussed widely in the literature, but the former has attracted little attention so far. In this paper I explore the possibility of explaining the excess near 98 GeV through production of the lighter CP–even Higgs boson in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). It is shown that this allows to simultaneously explain the excess near 115 GeV through the production of the heavier CP–even MSSM Higgs boson. The resulting light Higgs sector offers opportunities for charged Higgs boson searches at the Tevatron and LHC. Neutral Higgs boson searches at the LHC in the di–muon channel are also promising. However, conclusive tests of this scenario may have to wait for the construction of a linear