Gauge independent effective potential and the Higgs boson mass bound - art. no. 016002

We introduce the Vilkovisky-DeWitt formalism for deriving the lower bound o f the Higgs boson mass. We illustrate the formalism with a simplified versi on of the standard electroweak model, where all charged boson fields as wel l as the bottom-quark field are disregarded. The effective potential obtain ed in this approach is gauge independent. We derive from the effective pote ntial the mass bound of the Higgs boson. The result is compared to its coun terpart obtained from the ordinary effective potential. [S0556-2821(99)0621 1-6].