WMAP-compliant benchmark surfaces for MSSM Higgs bosons

We explore 'benchmark surfaces' suitable for studying the phenomenology of Higgs bosons in the minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model (MSSM), which are chosen so that the supersymmetric relic density is generally compatible with the range of cold dark matter density preferred by WMAP and other observations. These benchmark surfaces are specified assuming that gaugino masses m _1/2, soft trilinear supersymmetry-breaking parameters A ₀ and the soft supersymmetry-breaking contributions m ₀ to the squark and slepton masses are universal, but not those associated with the Higgs multiplets (the NUHM framework). The benchmark surfaces may be presented as (M _A, tanβ) planes with fixed or systematically varying values of the other NUHM parameters, such as m ₀, m _1/2, A ₀ and the Higgs mixing parameter μ. We discuss the prospects for probing experimentally these benchmark surfaces at the Tevatron collider, the LHC, the ILC, in B physics and in direct dark-matter detection experiments. An appendix documents developments in the FeynHiggs code that enable the user to explore for her/himself the WMAP-compliant benchmark surfaces.