Supersymmetry versus precision experiments revisited

We study constraints on the supersymmetric standard model from the updated electroweak precision measurements - the Z-pole experiments and the W-boson mass measurements. The supersymmetric-particle contributions to the universal gauge-boson-propagator corrections are parametrized by the three oblique parameters S-Z, T-Z and m(W). The oblique corrections, the Zqq and Zll vertex corrections, and the vertex and box corrections to the mu-decay width are separately studied in detail. We first study individual contribution from the four sectors of the model, the squarks, the sleptons, the supersymmetric fermions (charginos and neutralinos), and the supersymmetric Higgs bosons, to the universal oblique parameters, where the sum of individual contributions gives the total correction. We find that the light squarks or sleptons, whose masses just above the present direct search limits, always make the fit worse than that of the Standard Model (SM), whereas the light charginos and neutralinos generally make the fit slightly better. The contribution from the supersymmetric Higgs sector is found small. We then study the vertex/box corrections carefully when both the supersymmetric fermions (-inos) and the supersymmetric scalars (squarks and sleptons) are light, and find that no significant improvement over the SM fit is achieved. The best overall fit to the precision measurements are found when charginos of mass similar to 100 GeV with a dominant wine-component are present and the doublet squarks and sleptons are all much heavier. The improvement over the SM is marginal, however, where the total chi(2) of the fit to the 22 data points decreases by about one unit, due mainly to a slightly better fit to the Z-boson total width, (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.