Building a Nest at Tree Level: Classical Metastability and Non-Trivial Vacuum Structure in Supersymmetric Field Theories

TL;DR

This paper introduces a simple, perturbative model with classical metastable vacua in supersymmetric theories, featuring both D-term and F-term supersymmetry breaking, enabling explicit calculations of vacuum properties.

Contribution

It presents a novel, purely perturbative construction of metastable vacua at tree-level with multiple degenerate non-supersymmetric states in supersymmetric field theories.

Findings

Metastable vacua occur classically at tree-level.

The model includes both D-term and F-term supersymmetry breaking.

Multiple degenerate non-supersymmetric vacua can exist.

Abstract

It is becoming increasingly clear that metastable vacua may play a prominent role in supersymmetry-breaking. To date, however, this idea has been realized only in models where non-perturbative dynamics complicates the analysis of metastability. In this paper, we present a simple construction in which metastable vacua occur classically, i.e., at tree-level, and in which supersymmetry-breaking is sourced by both D-terms and F-terms. All relevant dynamics is perturbative, and hence calculations of vacuum energies and lifetimes can be performed explicitly. Moreover, we find that our construction can even give rise to multiple non-supersymmetric vacua which are degenerate. The non-trivial vacuum structure of such models therefore suggests that they can provide a rich arena for future studies of vacuum metastability in supersymmetric field theories. Our results may also have important consequences for Z' phenomenology and the string landscape.