Minimal Stability in Maximal Supergravity

TL;DR

This paper explores the stability of non-supersymmetric AdS critical points in maximal supergravity, revealing a narrow window for stable SUSY breaking and a minimal amount of SUSY breaking needed to perturb from supersymmetric points.

Contribution

It introduces a sGoldstino-based analysis to determine stability conditions and shows the existence of a minimal SUSY breaking threshold in maximal supergravity.

Findings

Stable non-supersymmetric AdS points exist within a narrow parameter window.

Perturbing supersymmetric points into non-supersymmetric ones requires a minimal SUSY breaking amount.

Impossible to achieve stability without a certain level of SUSY breaking.

Abstract

Recently, it has been shown that maximal supergravity allows for non-supersymmetric AdS critical points that are perturbatively stable. We investigate this phenomenon of stability without supersymmetry from the sGoldstino point of view. In particular, we calculate the projection of the mass matrix onto the sGoldstino directions, and derive the necessary conditions for stability. Indeed we find a narrow window allowing for stable SUSY breaking points. As a by-product of our analysis, we find that it seems impossible to perturb supersymmetric critical points into non-supersymmetric ones: there is a minimal amount of SUSY breaking in maximal supergravity.