The light Higgs in supersymmetric models with Higgs triplets

In supersymmetric models the presence of Higgs triplets introduce new quart ic interactions for the doublets that may raise the mass of the lightest CP -even field up to 205 GeV. We show that the complete effect of the triplets can be understood by decoupling them from the minimal sector and then anal yzing the vacuum and the spectrum of the effective two-Higgs doubler model that results. We find that the maximum value of m(h) is only achieved in a very definite region of the parameter space. In this region, however, radia tive corrections decrease the bound to approximate to 190 GeV. (C) 1998 Els evier Science B.V. All rights reserved.