Dynamical Supersymmetry Breaking from Meta-stable Vacua in an N=1 Supersymmetric Gauge Theory

TL;DR

This paper explores how meta-stable supersymmetry-breaking vacua can arise in an N=2 supersymmetric gauge theory with small N=1 perturbations, highlighting the role of strong dynamics and effective potentials.

Contribution

It demonstrates the existence of long-lived, meta-stable supersymmetry-breaking vacua in an N=2 gauge theory with specific perturbations, using exact results from supersymmetric QCD.

Findings

Supersymmetry is dynamically broken on the Coulomb branch due to strong SU(2) dynamics.

The Higgs branch retains supersymmetry, providing a stable vacuum.

Meta-stable vacua have sufficiently long lifetimes to be physically relevant.

Abstract

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 supersymmetric vacuum on the Higgs branch remains. We also estimate the lifetimes of the local minima on the Coulomb branch. We find that they are sufficiently long and therefore the local vacua we find are meta-stable.