The scale of supersymmetry breaking as a free parameter

While supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model can be fully describe d in terms of explicitly broken global supersymmetry, this description is o nly effective. Once related to spontaneous breaking in a more fundamental t heory, the effective parameters translate to functions of two distinct scal es, the scale of spontaneous supersymmetry breaking and the scale of its me diation to the standard-model fields. The scale dependence will be written explicitly and the full spectrum of supersymmetry breaking operators which emerges will be explored. It will be shown that, contrary to common lore, s cale-dependent operators can play an important role in determining the phen omenology. For example, theories with low-energy supersymmetry breaking, su ch as gauge mediation, may correspond to a scalar potential which is quite different than in theories with high-energy supersymmetry breaking, such as gravity mediation. As a concrete example, the Higgs mass prediction will b e discussed in some detail and its upper bound will be shown to be sensitiv e to the supersymmetry breaking scale.