BOTTOM-TAU YUKAWA UNIFICATION IN THE NEXT-TO-MINIMAL SUPERSYMMETRIC STANDARD MODEL

We discuss the unification of the bottom quark and tau lepton Yukawa couplings within the framework of the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model. We compare the allowed regions of the m(t)-tan beta plane to those in the minimal supersymmetric standard model, and find that over much of the parameter space the deviation between the predictions of two models is small, and nearly always much less than the effect of current theoretical and experimental uncertainties in the bottom quark mass and the strong coupling constant. However over some regions of parameter space top-bottom Yukawa unification cannot be achieved. We also discuss the scaling of the light fermion masses and mixing angles, and show that to within current uncertainties the results of recent texture analyses performed for the minimal model also apply to the next-to-minimal model.