Related papers: A new (string motivated) approach to the little hi…
We consider a scenario where supersymmetry (SUSY) is broken at a relatively low scale by modular fields of extra compact spacelike dimensions. The effect of both soft and hard SUSY breaking terms on the mass of the lightest neutral Higgs…
We motivate Higgsino dark matter from a solution to the cosmological moduli/gravitino problem. Cosmological moduli/gravitino should be heavy enough to decay before the onset of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, and this requirement typically forces…
The minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model (SM) is a well motivated scenario for physics beyond the SM, which allows a perturbative description of the theory up to scales of the order of the Grand Unification scale, where…
Superpartner masses cannot be arbitrarily heavy if supersymmetric extensions of the standard model explain the stability of the gauge hierarchy. This ancient and hallowed motivation for weak scale supersymmetry is often quoted, yet no…
We construct flux-stabilised IIB compactifications whose extra dimensions (EDs) have very different sizes, and use these to describe several vacua with a TeV string scale. Because we can access regimes where 2 dimensions are hierarchically…
We propose a solution to the mu/Bmu problem in gauge-mediated SUSY breaking, which does not suffer from the SUSY CP problem and is consistent with the solution to the strong CP problem. The model is based on Z_3-invariant NMSSM with…
We consider no-scale inspired supergravity scenarios, where the gravitino mass and related soft supersymmetry-breaking parameters are determined dynamically by radiative corrections to an essentially flat tree-level potential in the…
The August 2011 Higgs mass prediction was based on an ongoing six year project studying M-theory compactified on a manifold of G2 holonomy, with significant contributions from Jing Shao, Eric Kuflik, and others, and particularly co-led by…
We propose a way to generate the electroweak symmetry breaking radiatively in non-supersymmetric type I models with string scale in the TeV region. By identifying the Higgs field with a tree-level massless open string state, we find that a…
We continue our study of the low energy implications of $M$ theory vacua on $G_2$ manifolds, undertaken in \cite{Acharya:2007rc,Acharya:2006ia}, where it was shown that the moduli can be stabilized and a TeV scale generated, with the Planck…
We analyze the scalar potential of the Simplest Little Higgs (SLH) model in an approach consistent with the spirit of continuum effective field theory (CEFT). By requiring correct electroweak symmetry breaking (EWSB) with the…
I review the relations between mass scales in various string theories and in M-theory. I discuss physical motivations and possible consistent realizations of large volume compactifications and low string scale. Large longitudinal…
The physics of moduli fields is examined in the scenario where the gravitino is relatively heavy with mass of order 10 TeV, which is favored in view of the severe gravitino problem. The form of the moduli superpotential is shown to be…
In the present thesis I studied the phenomenology arising from a class of string models called sequestered compactifications, which were born with the aim of getting low-energy SUSY from strings. This is not an easy task if combined with…
We consider the sparticle and higgs spectroscopy in a class of superstring inspired models in which the string threshold corrections ensure the consistency of the string unification scale with the low energy data. The lightest neutralino is…
We show that the SU(3) little Higgs model has a region of parameter space in which electroweak symmetry breaking is natural and in which corrections to precision electroweak observables are sufficiently small. The model is anomaly free,…
It has been argued that requiring low electroweak fine-tuning (EWFT) along with a (partial) decoupling solution to the SUSY flavor and CP problems leads to a sparticle mass spectra characterized by light Higgsinos at 100-300 GeV, sub-TeV…
We update and extend to larger masses our previous analysis of the MSSM with minimal $SO_{10}$ [MSO$_{10}$SM] soft SUSY breaking boundary conditions. We find a well--defined, narrow region of parameter space which provides the observed…
Light gravitinos of mass $\lesssim \mathcal{O} (10)$ eV are of particular interest in cosmology, offering various baryogenesis scenarios without suffering from the cosmological gravitino problem. The gravitino may contribute considerably to…
Standard lore asserts that quantum effects generically forbid the occurrence of light (non-pseudo-Goldstone) scalars having masses smaller than the Kaluza Klein scale, M_KK, in extra-dimensional models, or the gravitino mass, M_3/2, in…