New fermions at the LHC and mass of the Higgs boson

Unification at MGUT∼3×1016 GeV of the three Standard Model (SM) gauge couplings can be achieved by postulating the existence of a pair of vectorlike fermions carrying SM charges and masses of order 300 GeV-1 TeV. The presence of these fermions significantly modifies the vacuum stability and perturbativity bounds on the mass of the SM Higgs boson. The new vacuum stability bound in this extended SM is estimated to be 117 GeV, to be compared with the SM prediction of about 128 GeV. An upper bound of 190 GeV is obtained based on perturbativity arguments. The impact on these predictions of type I seesaw physics is also discussed. The discovery of a relatively 'light' Higgs boson with mass ∼117 GeV could signal the presence of new vectorlike fermions within reach of the LHC.