Higgs at 105 GeV?

As Jacques Distler reminds us, we normally argue that LEP has imposed a lower bound on the Higgs boson mass: 115 GeV. Slightly below this level, maybe around 105 GeV, there can be a viable candidate that was seen as a weak signal. However, it contradicts the previous sentence about the lower bound and we usually discard the signal.

Are we doing a wise thing?

Dermíšek and Gunion argue that in next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model (NMSSM) two things happen: first of all, with the lowest possible fine-tuning you can imagine, the Higgs is predicted at 105 GeV. Second of all, the decay channels are a bit different, the classical decay channel weakens, and therefore 115 GeV is no longer a lower bound on the mass.

In other words, it is plausible that LEP has seen a small signal for the most natural value of the Higgs mass in the second simplest supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model you can imagine. Note that the Standard Model itself was also the second simplest theory with an SU(2) gauge group you can imagine. ;-)

If this NMSSM scenario were right, I would prefer not to share Jacques' bitterness about the difficulties with observing Higgs directly at the LHC. There could be more interesting things to observe! ;-) Looks like I am not the only one who told this thing to Jacques.