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, $\mg \sim$ 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\%.