Preliminary Limits from searches for the neutral Higgs bosons in the $e^{+}e^{-}$ collisions at centre-of-mass energies of 181-184 GeV

The processes e+e- --> hZ and e+e- --> hA are used to search for neutral Higgs bosons, both in the standard model and its minimal supersymmetric extension. All relevant final states, hll, hnunu, hqq, tau tau b b and bbbb were analysed in the data collected by ALEPH in 1997 at centre-of-mass energies of 181-184 GeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 57 pb-1. The various selections were optimised so that, when combined, the best 95\.L. limit on the Higgs boson masses be achieved on average in case of absence of Higgs boson signal. Altogether, nine events were observed, in agreement with the expectation of 9.6 events from all standard model processes. When combined with lower energy ALEPH data, this results in a preliminary 95\.L. lower mass limit of 87.9 Gev/c2 for the standard model Higgs boson. In the MSSM, with basic parameter choices for the SUSY scale and the stop mixing, lower limits of 72.2 and 76.1 GeV/c2 are derived for the neutral Higgs bosons h and A of the MSSM for any tan(beta) value in excess of one.