Fine tuning as an indication of physics beyond the MSSM

We investigate the amount of fine tuning of the electroweak scale in the presence of new physics beyond the MSSM, parametrized by higher dimensional operators. We show that these significantly reduce the MSSM fine tuning to Δ<10 for a Higgs mass between the LEPII bound and 130 GeV, and a corresponding scale M* of new physics as high as 30 to 65 times the higgsino mass. If the fine-tuning criterion is indeed of physical relevance, the findings indicate the presence of new physics in the form of new states of mass of O(M*) that generated the effective operators in the first instance. At small tanβ these states can be a gauge singlet or a SU(2) triplet. We derive analytical results for the EW scale fine-tuning for the MSSM with higher dimensional operators, including the quantum corrections which are also applicable to the pure MSSM case in the limit the coefficients of the higher dimension operators vanish. A general expression for the fine-tuning is also obtained for an arbitrary two-Higgs doublet potential.