Re-examination of electroweak symmetry breaking in supersymmetry and implications for light superpartners

We examine arguments that could avoid light superpartners as an implication of supersymmetric radiative electroweak symmetry breaking. We argue that, from the point of view of string theory and standard approaches to generating the mu term, cancellations among parameters are not a generic feature. While the coefficients relating M-Z to parameters in the soft supersymmetry breaking Lagrangian can be made smaller, these same mechanisms lead to lighter superpartner masses at the electroweak scale. Consequently we strengthen the implication that gluinos, neutralmos, and charginos are light and likely to be produced at the Fermilab Tevatron and a linear collider. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.