Automatised full one-loop renormalisation of the MSSM I: The Higgs sector, the issue of tan(beta) and gauge invariance

We give an extensive description of the renormalisation of the Higgs sector of the minimal supersymmetric model in SloopS. SloopS is an automatised code for the computation of one-loop processes in the MSSM. In this paper, the first in a series, we study in detail the non gauge invariance of some definitions of tan(beta). We rely on a general non-linear gauge fixing constraint to make the gauge parameter dependence of different schemes for tan(beta) at one-loop explicit. In so doing, we update, within these general gauges, an important Ward-Slavnov-Taylor identity on the mixing between the pseudo-scalar Higgs, A^0, and the Z^0. We then compare the tan(beta) scheme dependence of a few observables. We find that the best tan(beta) scheme is the one based on the decay A^0 -> tau^+ tau^- because of its gauge invariance, being unambiguously defined from a physical observable, and because it is numerically stable. The oft used DRbar scheme performs almost as well on the last count, but is usually defined from non-gauge invariant quantities in the Higgs sector. The use of the heavier scalar Higgs mass in lieu of tan(beta) though related to a physical parameter induces too large radiative corrections in many instances and is therefore not recommended.