Higgs and $Z$ boson decays into light gluinos

We calculate the decay rate of scalar and pseudoscalar Higgs bosons into a pair of gluinos, within the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. In the theoretically and experimentally allowed light gluino window, m˜ ∼ 3–5 GeV, gluino pairs can completely dominate the decays of the light scalar Higgs boson and play a prominent role in the decay of the pseudoscalar Higgs boson. This would alter the limits obtained from Z decays on the lightest CP–even and CP–odd Higgs bosons, and could jeopardize the search for these Higgs particles at future hadron colliders. In contrast, the branching ratio for the two–body decay of Z bosons into pairs of light gluinos is less than 0.1%.