How can a heavy Higgs boson be consistent with the precision electroweak measurements? art. no. 093003

The fit of precision electroweak data to the minimal standard model current ly gives an upper limit on the Higgs boson mass of 170 GeV at 95% confidenc e. Nevertheless. it is often said that the Higgs boson could be much heavie r in more general models. In this paper, we critically review models that h ave been proposed in the literature that allow a heavy Higgs boson consiste nt with the precision electroweak constraints. All have unusual features, a nd all can be distinguished from the minimal standard model either by impro ved precision measurements or by other signatures accessible to next-genera tion colliders.