Implications of a high mass light MSSM Higgs scalar for supersymmetry searches at the LHC

The Atlas and CMS groups have both reported an excess of events in the WW* -> l(+)l(-) + E-T(miss) search channel, which could be the first evidence for the Higgs boson. In the MSSM, the lightest SUSY Higgs scalar h is expected to occur with mass m(h) & 135 GeV, depending on the range of SUSY parameters scanned over. Since the h -> WW* branching fraction falls swiftly with decreasing m(h), a signal in the WW* channel would favor an h at the high end of its predicted mass range. We scan over general GUT scale SUSY model parameters to find those which give rise to m(h) greater than or similar to 130 GeV. Lambda value of m(0) similar to 10-20 TeV is favored, with Lambda(0) similar to +/- 2m(0), while the lower range of m (1/2) less than or similar to 1 TeV is also slightly favored. This gives rise to an effective SUSY'' type of sparticle mass spectrum. For low m (1/2), gluino pairs may be accessible to LHC searches, while for higher m (1/2) values, the SUSY spectra would likely be out of range of LHC reach.