We study the scenario that conformal dynamics leads to metastable supersymmetry breaking vacua. At a high energy scale, the superpotential is not R-symmetric, and has a supersymmetric minimum. However, conformal dynamics suppresses several operators along renormalization group flow toward the infrared fixed point. Then we can find an approximately R-symmetric superpotential, which has a metastable supersymmetry breaking vacuum, and the supersymmetric vacuum moves far away from the metastable supersymmetry breaking vacuum. We show a 4D simple model. Furthermore, we can construct 5D models with the same behavior, because of the AdS/CFT dual.
We show that supersymmetric Abelian models that are obtained from deformations of those with ${\cal N}=2$ supersymmetry also contain metastable vacua for a wide range of parameters. The deformations we consider are combinations of masses for charged and singlet fields, a singlet F--term and an anomalous D--term. We find that, in all cases, the nonsupersymmetric vacua are parametrically far from the supersymmetric ones and therefore metastable. Using retrofitting, we show that these metastable vacua may lead to semi--realistic phenomenology.
Recently Murayama and Nomura proposed a simple scheme to construct the gauge mediation models, using metastable supersymmetry breaking vacua. It has a possibility to predict the ultra light gravitino mass m_{3/2} \lesssim 16 eV, while such a light gravitino may destabilize the metastable vacua. We investigate stability of the metastable vacuum of their model. The transition rate from the false vacuum to true ones is evaluated by numerical calculation, including the Coleman-Weinberg potential destabilizing the metastable vacuum. It is found that when the messenger sector is minimal, stability o…
We point out that, in a class of gauge mediation models using metastable supersymmetry breaking vacua, the minimum of the supersymmetry breaking field in the early universe is dynamically deviated from the one in the low energy. The deviation induces coherent oscillations of the supersymmetry breaking field, which decays into the gravitinos. For certain parameters, it can produce a right amount of the gravitinos to account for the observed dark matter.
In the Intriligator-Seiberg-Shih model, we parametrize spontaneous breaking of $U(1)_R$ symmetry with two gauge singlets with R-charges 1 and --1. These singlets can play the role of the messengers. The messenger scale is dynamically generated, and hence there is no hierarchy problem between the supersymmetry breaking scale and the messenger scale. In the gauge mediation scenario, supersymmetry breaking scale turns out to be around $\mathcal{O}(10^6)\textrm{GeV}$.
We analyze vacuum decay in brane world setups, where a free scalar field in five dimensions has a localized potential admitting metastable vacua. We study in particular the bounce solution and its properties in flat and warped spaces. In the latter case, placing into a deeply warped region the term in the potential that lifts the vacuum degeneracy, can increase indefinitely the lifetime of the false vacuum. We discuss the application to metastable vacua in supersymmetric brane-world constructions.
Vscape is an interactive tool for studying the one-loop effective potential of an ungauged supersymmetric model of chiral multiplets. The program allows the user to define a supersymmetric model by specifying the superpotential. The F-terms and the scalar and fermionic mass matrices are calculated symbolically. The program then allows you to search numerically for (meta)stable minima of the one-loop effective potential. Additional commands enable you to further study specific minima, by e.g. computing the mass spectrum for those vacua. Vscape combines the flexibility of symbolic software, with…
We study the question whether a possible metastable vacuum state is actually populated in a phase transition in the early universe, as is usually assumed in the discussion of vacuum stability bounds e.g. for Standard Model parameters. A phenomenological (3+1)-dimensional Langevin equation is solved numerically for a toy model with a potential motivated by the finite temperature 1-loop effective potential of the Standard Model including additional non-renormalizable operators from an effective theory for physics beyond the Standard Model and a time dependent temperature. It turns out that wheth…
In the context of flux compactifications, metastable vacua with a small positive cosmological constant are obtained by combining a sector where supersymmetry is broken dynamically with the sector responsible for moduli stabilization, which is known as the F-uplifting. We analyze this procedure in a model-independent way and study phenomenological properties of the resulting vacua.
We show how gauged flavour breaking and N = 1 supersymmetry breaking can be dynamically aligned to produce natural models. Supersymmetry is broken in a metastable vacuum, while a weakly gauged flavour symmetry is identified with an SU(3)_F subgroup of the global symmetry of the SQCD model. We find that alignment can easily occur either through strongly coupled flavour models, with SQCD bound states playing the role of flavons, or entirely weakly coupled and renormalizable models with elementary SU(3)_F adjoint flavons. In both cases it is essential that the SU(3)_F breaking, and hence all the …
Anomalously small gaugino masses are a common feature of various models of direct gauge mediation. This problem is closely related to the vacuum structure of the theory. In this paper we show that massive SQCD can have SUSY-breaking vacua which are qualitatively different from the ISS vacuum. These novel vacua are metastable with respect to decay to the ISS vacuum. We demonstrate the possibility of addressing the gaugino mass problem in this framework. We study the properties of these vacua and construct an example of a model of direct gauge mediation.
We study the scenario that conformal dynamics leads to metastable supersymmetry breaking vacua. At a high energy scale, the superpotential is not R-symmetric, and has a supersymmetric minimum. However, conformal dynamics suppresses several operators along renormalization group flow toward the infrared fixed point. Then we can find an approximately R-symmetric superpotential, which has a metastable supersymmetry breaking vacuum, and the supersymmetric vacuum moves far away from the metastable supersymmetry breaking vacuum. We show a 4D simple model. Furthermore, we can construct 5D models with …
We show that in (anomalous) U(1) gauge theories with the Fayet-Iliopoulos (FI) term and with generic interactions there are meta-stable vacua in which supersymmetry (SUSY) is spontaneously broken even without U(1)_R symmetry and various hierarchical structures, for example, Yukawa hierarchy, can be explained by the smallness of the FI parameter. When we introduce generic interactions, i.e., all interactions including higher dimensional interactions which are allowed by the symmetry of the theory with O(1) coefficients, various scales can be determined by the symmetry (U(1) charges of the intro…
We argue that fields responsible for inflation and supersymmetry breaking are connected by gravitational couplings. In view of the recent progress in studying supersymmetry breaking in a metastable vacuum, we have shown that in models of supersymmetric hybrid inflation, where R-symmetry plays an important role, the scale of supersymmetry breaking is generated dynamically at the end of inflation and turns out to be consistent with gravity mediation.
We investigate the possibility of obtaining a low scale of supersymmetry breaking within the ISS framework using a metastable vacuum. This is achieved by introducing an R-symmetry preserving gravitational coupling of the ISS sector to a relatively low scale inflationary sector. We find the allowed range for the supersymmetry breaking scale, 10^4 GeV < μ< 10^8 GeV, which is low enough to be amenable to gauge supersymmetry breaking mediation. This scenario is based upon a so-called hilltop inflation phase whose initial condition problem is also addressed.
Until recently, dynamical supersymmetry breaking seemed an exceptional phenomenon, involving chiral gauge theories with a special structure. Recently it has become clear that requiring only metastable states with broken supersymmetry leads to a far broader class of theories. In this paper, we extend these constructions still further, finding new classes which, unlike earlier theories, do not have unbroken, approximate $R$ symmetries. This allows construction of new models with direct gauge mediation. These theories permit a relatively compact solution to the $μ$ problem.
We study supersymmetry breaking in metastable vacua on the Coulomb branch of perturbed N=2 gauge theories, with gauge group SU(2) and different matter content (N_f=0,2,4). The theory is deformed with a superpotential which is a cubic polynomial in u=Tr Φ^2, where Φis the adjoint superfield. The allowed region of the perturbation parameters in this N=1 theory is plotted as a function of the moduli space coordinate. In the asymptotically free cases a significant fine-tuning in the perturbation parameters is needed to achieve metastable vacua in the weakly coupled region of the moduli space; a lo…
Much has been learned about metastable vacua and R-symmetry breaking in O'Raifeartaigh models. Such work has largely been done from the perspective of the superpotential and by including Coleman-Weinberg corrections to the scalar potential. Instead, we consider these ideas from the perspective of the one loop effective Kahler potential. We translate known ideas to this framework and construct convenient formulas for computing individual terms in the expanded effective Kahler potential. We do so for arbitrary R-charge assignments and allow for small R-symmetry violating terms so that both spont…
The decay rates of metastable SQCD vacua in ISS-type models, both towards supersymmetric vacua as well as towards other nonsupersymmetric configurations arising in theories with elementary spectators, are estimated numerically in the semiclassical approximation by computing the corresponding multifield bounce configurations. The scaling of the bounce action with respect to the most relevant dimensionless couplings and ratios of scales is analyzed. In the case of the decays towards the susy vacua generated by nonperturbative effects, the results confirm previous analytical estimations of this s…
We study the existence of metastable vacua in cascades based on fractional brane configurations at non-isolated singularities preserving N = 1 supersymmetry. We find that in a large class of models the extra moduli typically generated along such cascades may be stabilized by utilizing special monopole points found recently. We illustrate this in detail for cascades based on the SPP singularity. The supergravity interpretation of these constructions in terms of warped throats with supersymmetry breaking localized near their tips as well as applications to string compactification is discussed. O…
We propose a new type of moduli stabilization scenario where the supersymmetric and supersymmetry-breaking minima are degenerate at the leading level. The inclusion of the loop-corrections originating from the matter fields resolves this degeneracy of vacua. Light axions are predicted in one of our models.
We study the compatibility of spontaneous breaking of parity and successful cosmology in a left-right symmetric model where supersymmetry breaking is achieved in metastable vacua. We show that domain walls formed due to this breaking can be removed due to Planck scale suppressed terms, provided the parity breaking scale $M_R$ is constrained to remain smaller than $10^{10}-10^{11}$ GeV. Ensuring metastability is achieved naturally even if the entire mechanism operates at low scales, within a few orders of magnitude of the TeV scale. Taking $M_R$ as high as permitted, close to the acceptable reh…
We show that, for a generic choice of a point on the Coulomb branch of any N=2 supersymmetric gauge theory, it is possible to find a superpotential perturbation which generates a metastable vacuum at the point. For theories with SU(N) gauge group, such a superpotential can be expressed as a sum of single-trace terms for N=2 and 3. If the metastable point is chosen at the origin of the moduli space, we can show that the superpotential can be a single-trace operator for any N. In both cases, the superpotential is a polynomial of degree 3N of the vector multiplet scalar field.
We study the meson spectra in the excited QCD vacua, denominated replicas. We find all mesons have real masses, with no tachyons, thus showing the QCD replicas are indeed metastable.
In the no-scale supergravity global symmetries protect local supersymmetry and a zero value for the cosmological constant. The breakdown of these symmetries, which ensures the vanishing of the vacuum energy density, results in a set of degenerate vacua with broken and unbroken supersymmetry leading to the natural realisation of the multiple point principle (MPP). In the MPP inspired SUGRA models the cosmological constant is naturally tiny.
I put metastable supersymmetry breaking in a cosmological context. I argue that under reasonable assumptions, the cooling down early Universe favors metastable SUSY-breaking vacua over the stable supersymmetric vacua. To illustrate the general argument, I analyze the early-Universe history of the Intriligator-Seiberg-Shih model.
We calculate the low energy effective action of massless and massive complex linear superfields coupled to a massive U(1) vector multiplet. Our calculations include superspace higher derivative corrections and therefore go beyond previous results. Among the superspace higher derivatives we find that terms which lead to a deformation of the auxiliary field potential and may break supersymmetry are also generated. We show that the supersymmetry breaking vacua can only be trusted if there exists a hierarchy between the higher order terms. A renormalization group analysis shows that generically a …
We construct a model of direct gauge mediation of metastable SUSY breaking by simply deforming the Intriligator, Seiberg and Shih model in terms of a dual meson superpotential mass term. No extra matter field is introduced. The deformation explicitly breaks a U(1)_R symmetry and a pseudo moduli have a nonzero VEV at one-loop. Our metastable SUSY breaking vacuum turns out to be sufficiently long-lived. By gauging a subgroup of flavor symmetry, our model can directly couple to the standard model, which leads to nonvanishing gaugino mass generation. It is also shown that our model can evade the L…
We consider "Orientifold field theories", namely SU(N) gauge theories with Dirac fermions in the two-index representation at high temperature. When N is even these theories exhibit a spontaneously broken Z2 centre symmetry. We study aspects of the domain wall that interpolates between the two vacua of the theory. In particular we calculate its tension to two-loop order. We compare its tension to the corresponding domain wall in a SU(N) gauge theory with adjoint fermions and find an agreement at large-N, as expected from planar equivalence between the two theories. Moreover, we provide a non-pe…
We investigate supersymmetry breaking meta-stable vacua in N=2, SU(2)\times U(1) gauge theory with N_f=2 massless flavors perturbed by the addition of small N=1 preserving mass terms in a presence of a Fayet-Iliopoulos term. We derive the low energy effective theory by using the exact results of N=2 supersymmetric QCD and examine the effective potential. At the classical level, the theory has supersymmetric vacua on Coulomb and Higgs branches. We find that supersymmetry on the Coulomb branch is dynamically broken as a consequence of the strong dynamics of SU(2) gauge symmetry while the supersy…
We describe a modified KKLT mechanism of moduli stabilization in a supersymmetric Minkowski vacuum state. In this mechanism, supersymmetry ensures vacuum stability and positivity of the mass matrix for the dilaton, complex structure, and the volume modulus.
We construct new examples of models of metastable D=4 N=1 supersymmetry breaking in which all scales are generated dynamically. Our models rely on Seiberg duality and on the ISS mechanism of supersymmetry breaking in massive SQCD. Some of the electric quark superfields arise as composites of a strongly coupled gauge sector. This allows us to start with a simple cubic superpotential and an asymptotically free gauge group in the ultraviolet, and end up with an infrared effective theory which breaks supersymmetry dynamically in a metastable state.
We study spontaneous supersymmetry breaking in spatially modulated stable or meta-stable vacua in supersymmetric field theories. Such spatial modulation can be realized in a higher derivative chiral model for which vacuum energies are either positive, negative or zero, depending on the model parameters. There appears a Nambu-Goldstone boson associated with the spontaneously breaking of the translational and $U(1)$ symmetries without the quadratic kinetic term and with a quartic derivative term in the modulated direction, and a gapless Higgs mode. We show that there appears a Goldstino associat…
I review a novel and non-perturbative way of breaking Supersymmetry in the flavour sector of electrically neutral particles, as a result of flavour mixing in the presence of stringy quantum gravity space-time foam backgrounds that violate Lorentz and CPT symmetries. In these models, part of the mixing may itself be induced dynamically by the interactions of the flavoured particles with the space-time foam.
Dynamical supersymmetry breaking in a long-lived meta-stable vacuum is a phenomenologically viable possibility. This relatively unexplored avenue leads to many new models of dynamical supersymmetry breaking. Here, we present a surprisingly simple class of models with meta-stable dynamical supersymmetry breaking: N=1 supersymmetric QCD, with massive flavors. Though these theories are strongly coupled, we definitively demonstrate the existence of meta-stable vacua by using the free-magnetic dual. Model building challenges, such as large flavor symmetries and the absence of an R-symmetry, are eas…
We show how chiral type I models whose tadpole conditions have no supersymmetric solution can be consistently defined introducing antibranes with non-supersymmetric world volumes. At tree level, the resulting stable non-BPS configurations correspond to tachyon-free spectra, where supersymmetry is broken at the string scale on some (anti)branes but is exact in the bulk, and can be further deformed by the addition of brane-antibrane pairs of the same type. As a result, a scalar potential is generated, that can stabilize some radii of the compact space. This setting has the novel virtue of linkin…
We study a meta-stable supersymmetry-breaking vacuum in a generalized O'Raifeartaigh model at finite temperature and chemical potentials. Fields in the generalized O'Raifeartaigh model possess different R-charges to realize R-symmetry breaking. Accordingly, at finite density and temperature, the chemical potentials have to be introduced in a non-uniform way. Based on the formulation elaborated in our previous work we study the one-loop thermal effective potential including the chemical potentials in the generalized O'Raifeartaigh model. We perform a numerical analysis and find that the R-symme…
In this paper, we give a systematic procedure for building locally stable dS vacua in $\mathcal{N}=1$ supergravity models motivated by string theory. We assume that one of the superfields has a Kahler potential of no-scale type and impose a hierarchy of supersymmetry breaking conditions. In the no-scale modulus direction the supersymmetry breaking is not small, in all other directions it is of order $ε$. We establish the existence of an abundance of vacua for large regions in the parameter space spanned by $ε$ and the cosmological constant. These regions exist regardless of the details of the …
We study N=1 global and local supersymmetric theories with a continuous global $U(1)_R$ symmetry as models of dynamical supersymmetry (SUSY) breaking. We introduce explicit R-symmetry breaking terms into such models, in particular a generalized O'Raifeartaigh model. Such explicit R-symmetry breaking terms can lead to a SUSY preserving minimum. We classify explicit R-symmetry breaking terms by the structure of newly appeared SUSY stationary points as a consequence of the R-breaking effect, which could make the SUSY breaking vacuum metastable. We show that the R-breaking terms are basically divi…
If supersymmetry is broken in metastable vacua, it is not clear why we are now in there rather than supersymmetric vacua. Moreover, it is natural to expect that we were in supersymmetric vacua, which have higher symmetry than metastable vacua, in the early universe. In this paper, we reexamine and improve the previous analysis on the cosmological evolution of the vacuum structure in the ISS model of metastable supersymmetry breaking by taking into account constraints on the reheating temperature, which is needed to avoid the overproduction of gravitinos. It turns out that the desired phase tra…
We study the direct mediation of metastable supersymmetry breaking by a Φ^2-deformation to the ISS model and extend it by splitting both TrΦand TrΦ^2 terms in the superpotential and gauging the flavor symmetry. We find that with such an extension the enough long-lived metastable vacua can be obtained and the proper gaugino masses can be generated. Also, this allows for constructing a kind of models which can avoid the Landau pole problem. Especially, in our metastable vacua there exist a large region for the parameter m_3 which can satisfy the phenomenology requirements and allow for a low SUS…
In N=1 supergravity supersymmetric (SUSY) and non-supersymmetric Minkowski vacua originating in the hidden sector can be degenerate. In the supersymmetric phase in flat Minkowski space non-perturbative supersymmetry breakdown may take place in the observable sector, inducing a non-zero and positive vacuum energy density. Assuming that such a supersymmetric phase and the phase in which we live are degenerate, we estimate the value of the cosmological constant. We argue that the observed value of the dark energy density can be reproduced in the Split-SUSY scenario of the supersymmetry breaking i…
We argue that the Polonyi problem can be avoided when our supersymmetry-breaking vacuum is surrounded by many supersymmetric vacua. We construct a dynamical class of supersymmetry-breaking models to demonstrate our point. These models naturally predict a small deviation from the standard big-bang nucleosynthesis.
We analyze an R-symmetry breaking deformation of the ISS model for a direct mediation of supersymmetry breaking from a metastable vacuum. The model is weakly coupled and calculable. The LSP gravitino is light (m_{3/2}<16 eV) and the MSSM spectrum is natural with a light Higgs. The supersymmetry breaking sector, which is usually hidden, is observable (m~1 TeV) and may be a candidate for cold dark matter. We discuss its production and signature at LHC. We propose a UV completion of the model in terms of a duality cascade.
We study moduli stabilisation in four-dimensional $N=1$ supergravity theories which originate from compactifications of the heterotic string on certain manifolds with $SU(3)$ structure. These theories have a non-trivial superpotential generated from geometric flux and, in general, D-terms associated to anomalous $U(1)$ symmetries. We show that, at the perturbative level, there are no supersymmetry preserving vacua. However, subject to a certain technical condition on the D-terms which aligns the extrema of the F-term and D-term potentials, $\partial_iV_F=\partial_iV_D=0$, we find at the pertur…
We explore vacua of the U(N) gauge model with N=2 supersymmetry recently constructed in hep-th/0409060. In addition to the vacuum previously found with unbroken U(N) gauge symmetry in which N=2 supersymmetry is partially broken to N=1, we find cases in which the gauge symmetry is broken to a product gauge group \prod_{i=1}^n U(N_i). The N=1 vacua are selected by the requirement of a positive definite Kahler metric. We obtain the masses of the supermultiplets appearing on the N=1 vacua.
We calculate the pair-annihilation cross section of real scalar singlet dark matter into two mono-energetic photons. We derive constraints on the theory parameter space from the Fermi limits on gamma-ray lines, and we compare with current limits from direct dark matter detection. We show that the new limits, albeit typically relevant only when the dark matter mass is close to half the Standard Model Higgs mass, rule out regions of the theory parameter space that are otherwise not constrained by other observations or experiments. In particular, the new excluded regions partly overlap with the p…
We discuss the coupling of heavy moduli fields to light fields when the dynamics of the latter, absent such couplings, yields metastable vacua. We show that the survival of the vacuum structure of the local model depends nontrivially on the cross-couplings of the two sectors. In particular we find that for "local" models (such as those realized by D-branes in type II string theories) with metastable vacua breaking supersymmetry via F-terms, cross-coupling of the two sectors at an intermediate scale can push the metastable vacuum outside of the regime of the effective field theory. We parametri…
We present an extension of the mass sum rule that applies to renormalizable rigid supersymmetric field theories to the case of the N=1 supersymmetric effective action (the gauged non-linear sigma model) consisting of adjoint scalar superfields and vector superfields possessing a K"ahler potential, a set of gauge coupling functions (second prepotential derivatives) and a superpotential, which respectively set their energy scales. The mass sum rule derived is valid for any vacua, including the (metastable) one of broken supersymmetry with the condensates of D-term and/or F-term. We manage to ext…
We outline the construction of metastable de Sitter vacua of type IIB string theory. Our starting point is highly warped IIB compactifications with nontrivial NS and RR three-form fluxes. By incorporating known corrections to the superpotential from Euclidean D-brane instantons or gaugino condensation, one can make models with all moduli fixed, yielding a supersymmetric AdS vacuum. Inclusion of a small number of anti-D3 branes in the resulting warped geometry allows one to uplift the AdS minimum and make it a metastable de Sitter ground state. The lifetime of our metastable de Sitter vacua is …
We consider the metastable N=1 QCD model of Intriligator, Seiberg and Shih (ISS), deformed by adding a baryon term to the superpotential. This simple deformation causes the spontaneous breaking of the approximate R-symmetry of the metastable vacuum. We then gauge the flavour SU(5)_f and identify it with the parent gauge symmetry of the Standard Model (SM). This implements direct mediation of supersymmetry breaking without the need for an additional messenger sector. A reasonable choice of parameters leads to gaugino masses of the right order. Finally, we speculate that the entire ``ISS x SM'' …
We propose a direct gauge mediation model based on an uplifted metastable SUSY breaking coupled to supergravity. A constant superpotential plays an essential role to fix the moduli as well as breaking SUSY and R-symmetry and the cancellation of the cosmological constant. Gaugino masses are generated at leading order of SUSY breaking scale, and comparable to the sfermion masses as in the ordinary gauge mediation. Landau pole problem for QCD coupling can be easily solved since more than half of messengers become superheavy, which are heavier than the GUT scale.
The statistics of the supersymmetry breaking scale in the string landscape has been extensively studied in the past finding either a power-law behaviour induced by uniform distributions of F-terms or a logarithmic distribution motivated by dynamical supersymmetry breaking. These studies focused mainly on type IIB flux compactifications but did not systematically incorporate the Kähler moduli. In this paper we point out that the inclusion of the Kähler moduli is crucial to understand the distribution of the supersymmetry breaking scale in the landscape since in general one obtains unstable vacu…
We examine a metastable $\mathcal{N}=1$ Macroscopic SO(N) SQCD model of Intriligator, Seiberg and Shih (ISS). We introduce various baryon and meson deformations, including multitrace operators and explore embedding an SO(10) parent of the standard model into two weakly gauged flavour sectors. Direct fundamental messengers and the symmetric pseudo-modulus messenger mediate SUSY breaking to the MSSM. Gaugino and sfermion masses are computed and compared for each deformation type. We also explore reducing the rank of the magnetic quark matrix of the ISS model and find an additional fundamental me…
In this contribution, we discuss the possibility of meta-stable supersymmetry (SUSY) breaking vacua in a perturbed Seiberg-Witten theory with Fayet-Iliopoulos (FI) term. We found meta-stable SUSY breaking vacua at the degenerated dyon and monopole singular points in the moduli space at the nonperturbative level.
Consistent uplifting of AdS vacua in string theory often requires extra light degrees of freedom in addition to those of a (Kaehler) modulus. Here we consider the possibility that de Sitter and Minkowski vacua arise due to hidden sector matter interactions. We find that, in this scheme, the hierarchically small supersymmetry breaking scale can be explained by the scale of gaugino condensation and that interesting patterns of the soft terms arise. In particular, a matter-dominated supersymmetry breaking scenario and a version of the mirage mediation scheme appear in the framework of spontaneous…
The KKLT construction of de Sitter vacua includes an uplifting term coming from an anti-D3-brane. Here we show how this term can arise via spontaneous breaking of supersymmetry, based on the emergence of a nilpotent chiral supermultiplet on the world-volume of the anti-D3-brane. We establish and use the fact that both the DBI as well as the WZ term, with account of orientifolding, acquire a form of the Volkov-Akulov action. For an O3 orientifold involution of $\mathbb{R}^{9,1}$ we demonstrate the cancellation between the fermionic parts of the DBI and WZ term for the D3-brane action. For the a…
Metastable vacua in supersymmetric QCD in the presence of single and multitrace deformations of the superpotential are explored, with the aim of obtaining an acceptable phenomenology. The metastable vacua appear at one loop, have a broken R-symmetry, and a magnetic gauge group that is completely Higgsed. With only a single trace deformation, the adjoint fermions from the meson superfield are approximately massless at one loop, even though they are massive at tree level and R-symmetry is broken. Consequently, if charged under the standard model, they are unacceptably light. A multitrace quadrat…
We study a SU(2) gauge theory with a classical complex modulus. Introducing a chemical potential for a conserved modulus hypercharge causes it to become unstable and start condensing. We show that the modulus condensation in turn generates homogeneous but anisotropic non-abelian field strength condensates. The existence of a stable vacuum at the end point of the condensation process depends on a modulus representation under the gauge group. For a modulus in the fundamental representation, the global vacuum of the theory is a state both with the rotational symmetry and the electromagnetic U(1) …
