Global Symmetries and D-Terms in Supersymmetric Field Theories

TL;DR

This paper investigates the constraints on D-terms in supersymmetric theories, showing that large D-term SUSY-breaking vacua are absent under broad conditions, but certain non-perturbative models can generate comparable D- and F-terms.

Contribution

It provides new theoretical constraints on D-terms in SUSY theories and introduces explicit models with non-abelian D-terms, including a novel limit of the 3-2 model.

Findings

No large D-term SUSY-breaking vacua under broad assumptions

Existence of calculable models with non-abelian D-terms

Introduction of a new limit of the 3-2 model

Abstract

We study the role of D-terms in supersymmetry (SUSY) breaking. By carefully analyzing the SUSY multiplets containing various conserved currents in theories with global symmetries, we obtain a number of constraints on the renormalization group flow in supersymmetric field theories. Under broad assumptions, these results imply that there are no SUSY-breaking vacua, not even metastable ones, with parametrically large D-terms. This explains the absence of such D-terms in models of dynamical SUSY-breaking. There is, however, a rich class of calculable models which generate comparable D-terms and F-terms through a variety of non-perturbative effects; these D-terms can be non-abelian. We give several explicit examples of such models, one of which is a new calculable limit of the 3-2 model.