Related papers: Problems with False Vacua in Supersymmetric Theori…
A metastable state, or a false vacuum, is not an eigenstate of the Hamiltonian in quantum field theory. Its energy density has a non-zero imaginary part equal to its decay width. Therefore, supersymmetry cannot be exact in the false vacuum.…
The possible existence of an exponentially large number of vacua in string theory behooves one to consider possibilities beyond our traditional notions of naturalness. Such an approach to electroweak physics was recently used in "Split…
Explicit supersymmetry breaking is studied in higher dimensional theories by having boundaries respect only a subgroup of the bulk symmetry. If the boundary symmetry is the maximal subgroup allowed by the boundary conditions imposed on the…
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…
A supersymmetric theory with several scalar superfields generically has several domain wall type classical configurations which interpolate between various supersymmetric vacua of the scalar fields. Depending on the couplings, some of these…
We conjecture that all vacua in string theory decay. More precisely, non-supersymmetric vacua in string theory are at most metastable and eventually decay, while supersymmetric vacua are only marginally stable. All de Sitter vacua with…
For a long time, it has been widely assumed that if the underlying laws of nature are supersymmetric, supersymmetry is broken at a scale intermediate between the weak scale and the Planck mass. The construction of realistic models of…
We investigate the stability of the electroweak vacuum for two-Higgs doublet models with a supersymmetric UV completion. The supersymmetry breaking scale is taken to be of the order of the grand unification scale. We first study the case…
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…
Under the assumption that all the gauge groups in supersymmetric theories unify at the fundamental scale, the numbers and the mass scales of messenger quarks and leptons, as well as the beta-function coefficient of the sector for dynamical…
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…
Recently, a scenario has been proposed in which the gravitational scale could be as low as the TeV scale, and extra dimensions could be large and detectable at the electroweak scale. Although supersymmetry is not a requirement of this…
If a theory has more than one classically stable vacuum, quantum tunneling and thermal jumps make the transition between the vacua possible. The transition happens through a first order phase transition started by nucleation of a bubble of…
Supersymmetry breaking in a metastable vacuum allows one to build simple and concrete models of gauge mediation. Generation of gaugino masses requires that R-symmetry be broken in this vacuum. In general, there are two possible ways to…
We consider heterotic string backgrounds in four-dimensional Minkowski space, where N=1 supersymmetry is spontaneously broken at a low scale m_{3/2} by a stringy Scherk-Schwarz mechanism. We review how the effective gauge couplings at…
We review some aspects of the dramatic consequences of supersymmetry breaking on string vacua. In particular, we focus on the issue of vacuum stability in ten-dimensional string models with broken, or without, supersymmetry, whose…
We show that metastable supersymmetry breaking is generic near certain enhanced symmetry points of gauge theory moduli spaces. Our model consists of two sectors coupled by a singlet and combines dynamical supersymmetry breaking with an…
In a pioneering paper on the role of gravity on false vacuum decay, Coleman and De Luccia showed that a strong gravitational field can stabilize the false vacuum, suppressing the formation of true vacuum bubbles. This result is obtained for…
We investigate models of SU(N) SQCD with adjoint matter and non trivial mesonic deformations. We apply standard methods in the dual magnetic theory and we find meta-stable supersymmetry breaking vacua with arbitrary large lifetime. We…
We show that a cosmic string associated with spontaneous $U(1)_R$ symmetry breaking gives a constraint for supersymmetric model building. In some models, the string can be viewed as a tube-like domain wall with a winding number…