Building a nest at tree level: Classical metastability and nontrivial vacuum structure in supersymmetric field theories

Thomas, Brooks

doi:10.1103/physrevd.78.106011

Cited by 16 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 122 publications

(77 reference statements)

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“…4 This is not unreasonable, as although dominant D-term breaking does not arise dynamically [41,42] it is possible for a hidden sector to give rise to SUSY breaking satisfying D F , even for non-Abelian D-terms [42]. Some examples of hidden sectors with mixed F -and D-term SUSY breaking can be found in [42][43][44][45][46][47]. Previous attempts to build models with an R-symmetry have required VEVs for both H u and H d , and can be split into two classes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A supersymmetric one Higgs doublet model

Davies

March-Russell

McCullough

2011

J. High Energ. Phys.

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We present a supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model in which only one electroweak doublet acquires a vacuum expectation value and gives mass to Standard Model fermions. As well as the novel accommodation of a Standard Model Higgs within a supersymmetric framework, this leads to a very predictive model, with some advantages over the MSSM. In particular, problems with proton decay, flavour changing neutral currents and large CP violation are ameliorated, primarily due to the presence of an anomalyfree R-symmetry. Since supersymmetry must be broken at a low scale, gravity-mediated effects which break the R-symmetry are naturally small. The R-symmetry requires the presence of adjoint chiral superfields, to give Dirac masses to the gauginos; these adjoints are the only non-MSSM fields in the visible sector. The LSP is a very light neutralino, which is mostly bino. Such a light neutralino is not in conflict with experiment, and is a striking prediction of the minimal model. Additional scenarios to raise the mass of this neutralino to the weak scale are also outlined. Prospects for discovery at the LHC are briefly discussed, along with viable scenarios for achieving gauge-coupling unification.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A supersymmetric one Higgs doublet model

Davies

March-Russell

McCullough

2011

J. High Energ. Phys.

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“…Similar results also hold in supergravity theories, and these give a useful guideline towards the ingredients that are needed to achieve metastable de Sitter vacua in string models [8,9,10]. The case of theories involving also vector multiplets and local gauge symmetries is more complicated and less understood (see for example [11,12,13] for some simple examples). In this case, one should in principle look at a higher-dimensional sub-block of the scalar mass matrix that includes not only the two Goldstino partners but also the Goldstone partners.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 67%

The lightest scalar in theories with broken supersymmetry

Brizi

Scrucca²

2011

J. High Energ. Phys.

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We study the scalar mass matrix of general supersymmetric theories with local gauge symmetries, and derive an absolute upper bound on the lightest scalar mass. This bound can be saturated by suitably tuning the superpotential, and its positivity therefore represents a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of metastable vacua. It is derived by looking at the subspace of all those directions in field space for which an arbitrary supersymmetric mass term is not allowed and scalar masses are controlled by supersymmetry-breaking splitting effects. This subspace includes not only the direction of supersymmetry breaking, but also the directions of gauge symmetry breaking and the lightest scalar is in general a linear combination of fields spanning all these directions. We present explicit results for the simplest case of theories with a single local gauge symmetry. For renormalizable gauge theories, the lightest scalar is a combination of the Goldstino partners and its square mass is always positive. For more general non-linear sigma models, on the other hand, the lightest scalar can involve also the Goldstone partner and its square mass is not always positive.Comment: 30 pages, 3 figures; v2 introduction expanded, paragraph added in section 5 and two references adde

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“…Likewise, it is possible that an F-term component to supersymmetry breaking could be engineered via a modification of this scenario to include additional, vectorlike matter in a manner similar to that discussed in Ref. [14].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[14]. Specifically, we shall define the rescaled quantities 0 g, 0 =g N=2 , and È 0 i ffiffiffi g p È i , holding all other quantities fixed.…”

Section: The General Frameworkunclassified

Cascades and collapses, “great walls” and “forbidden cities”: Infinite towers of metastable vacua in supersymmetric field theories

Thomas

2009

Phys. Rev. D

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We present a series of supersymmetric models exhibiting an entirely new vacuum structure: towers of metastable vacua with higher and higher energies. As the number of vacua grows towards infinity, the energy of the highest vacuum remains fixed while the energy of the true ground state tends towards zero. We study the instanton-induced tunneling dynamics associated with such vacuum towers and find that many distinct decay patterns along the tower are possible: these include not only regions of vacua experiencing direct collapses and/or tumbling cascades, but also other regions of vacua whose stability is protected by ''great walls'' as well as regions of vacua populating ''forbidden cities'' into which tunneling cannot occur. We also discuss possible applications of this setup for the cosmological-constant problem, for studies of the string landscape, for supersymmetry breaking, and for Z 0 phenomenology. Finally, we point out that a limiting case of our setup yields theories with yet another new vacuum structure: infinite numbers of degenerate vacua. As a result, the true ground states of such theories are Bloch waves, with energy eigenvalues approximating a continuum and giving rise to a vacuum ''band'' structure.

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Building a nest at tree level: Classical metastability and nontrivial vacuum structure in supersymmetric field theories

Cited by 16 publications

References 122 publications

A supersymmetric one Higgs doublet model

A supersymmetric one Higgs doublet model

The lightest scalar in theories with broken supersymmetry

Cascades and collapses, “great walls” and “forbidden cities”: Infinite towers of metastable vacua in supersymmetric field theories

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