Supersymmetry Breaking on Gauged Non-Abelian Vortices

TL;DR

This paper studies how weak gauging of global symmetries affects non-Abelian vortices in systems with broken gauge symmetry, revealing vortex-fluctuation diffusion and spontaneous supersymmetry breaking.

Contribution

It derives an effective description of light excitations on non-Abelian vortices under weak gauging, showing novel effects like fluctuation diffusion and supersymmetry breaking.

Findings

Vortex orientational modes diffuse into bulk modes.

Weak gauging leads to spontaneous supersymmetry breaking.

Vortices remain 1/2 BPS saturated despite supersymmetry breaking.

Abstract

There are a large number of systems characterized by a completely broken gauge symmetry, but with an unbroken global color-flavor diagonal symmetry, i.e., systems in the so-called color-flavor locked phase. If the gauge symmetry breaking supports vortices, the latter develop non-Abelian orientational zero-modes and become non-Abelian vortices, a subject of intense study in the last several years. In this paper we consider the effects of weakly gauging the full exact global flavor symmetry in such systems, deriving an effective description of the light excitations in the presence of a vortex. Surprising consequences are shown to follow. The fluctuations of the vortex orientational modes get diffused to bulk modes through tunneling processes. When our model is embedded in a supersymmetric theory, the vortex is still 1/2 BPS saturated, but the vortex effective action breaks supersymmetry spontaneously.