Related papers: The cosmological constant in Supergravity
A mechanism for suppressing the cosmological constant is developed, based on an analogy with a superconducting phaseshift in which free fermions coupled perturbatively to a weak gravitational field are in an unstable false vacuum state. The…
Using a D = 1 supergravity framework I construct a super-Friedmann equation for an isotropic and homogenous universe including dynamical scalar fields. In the context of quantum theory this becomes an equation for a wave-function of the…
We continue developing cosmological models involving nilpotent chiral superfields, which provide a simple unified description of inflation and the current acceleration of the universe in the supergravity context. We describe here a general…
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…
It will be argued here that the cosmological constant problem exists because of the way the vacuum is defined in quantum field theory. It has been known for some time that for QFT to be gauge invariant certain terms--such as part of the…
Polonyi-Starobinsky (PS) supergravity is the N=1 supergravity model of Starobinsky inflation with spontaneous supersymmetry breaking (after inflation) due to Polonyi superfield, and inflaton belonging to a massive vector supermultiplet. The…
We consider an extension of the MSSM wherein anomaly mediation is the source of supersymmetry breaking, and the tachyonic slepton problem is solved by a gauged U(1) symmetry, which is broken at high energies in a manner preserving…
We outline the evaluation of the cosmological constant in the framework of the standard field-theoretical treatment of vacuum energy and discuss the relation between the vacuum energy problem and the gauge-group spontaneous symmetry…
In 2 + 1 dimensions, in the presence of gravity, supersymmetry can ensure the vanishing of the cosmological constant without requiring the equality of bose and fermi masses.
We consider a class of models with gauged U(1)_R symmetry in 4D N=1 supergravity that have, at the classical level, a metastable ground state, an infinitesimally small (tunable) positive cosmological constant and a TeV gravitino mass. We…
On the occasion of a century from the proposal of General relativity by Einstein, I attempt to tackle some open issues in modern cosmology, via a toy but non-trivial model. Specifically, I would like to link together: (i) the smallness of…
We study a supersymmetric deconstructed gauge theory in which a warp factor emerges dynamically, driven by Fayet-Iliopoulos terms. The model is peculiar in that it possesses a global supersymmetry that remains unbroken despite nonvanishing…
We derive a scalar potential in the recently proposed N=1 supersymmetric generalization of f(R) gravity in four space-time dimensions. Any such higher-derivative supergravity is classically equivalent to the standard N=1 supergravity…
We propose a phenomenological approach to the cosmological constant problem based on generally covariant non-local and acausal modifications of four-dimensional gravity at enormous distances. The effective Newton constant becomes very small…
A general no-go theorem dampens hope that the cosmological constant problem can be solved by a local symmetry mechanism. The possibility is considered here that this no-go theorem can be avoided by a pseudo-symmetry. A simple macroscopic…
The energy density of the universe today may be dominated by the vacuum energy of a slowly rolling scalar field. Making a quantum expansion around such a time dependent solution is found to break fundamental symmetries of quantum field…
We suggest a new mechanism for electroweak symmetry breaking in the supersymmetric Standard Model. Our suggestion is based on the presence of an anomalous U(1)_A gauge symmetry, which naturally arises in the four dimensional superstring…
We explicitly compute the component action of certain recently discovered new $\mathcal{N} = 1$ supergravity actions which enlarge the space of scalar potentials allowed by supersymmetry and also contain fermionic interaction terms that…
A large value of the cosmological constant (CC) is induced in the Standard Model (SM) of Elementary Particle Physics because of Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking. To provide a small value of the observable CC one has to introduce the vacuum…
The $N=1$ supersymmetric Born-Infeld theory coupled to $N=1$ supergravity in four spacetime dimensions is studied in the presence of a cosmological term with spontaneous supersymmetry breaking. The consistency is achieved by compensating a…