STRONG SUPERSYMMETRIC QUANTUM EFFECTS ON THE TOP QUARK WIDTH

We compute the one-loop supersymmetric QCD quantum effects on the width $\Gamma (t\rightarrow W^{+}\, b)$ of the canonical main decay of the top quark within the framework of the MSSM. The corrections can be of either sign depending on whether the stop squark mass is above or below the top quark decay threshold into stop and gluino $\Gamma (t\rightarrow\tilde{t} \,\tilde{g})$. For $m_{\tilde{t}}$ above that threshold, the corrections are negative and can be of the same order (and go in the same direction) as the ordinary QCD corrections, even for stop and gluino masses of ${\cal O}(100)\,GeV$. Since the electroweak supersymmetric quantum effects turn out to be also of the same sign and could be of the same order of magnitude, the total MSSM correction to the top quark width could potentially result in a rather large ${\cal O}(10-25)\%$ reduction of $\Gamma (t\rightarrow W^{+}\, b)$ far beyond the conventional QCD expectations.Comment: 11 page