Tame D-tadpoles in gauge mediation

TL;DR

This paper explores gauge mediated supersymmetry breaking models where the D-tadpole vanishes only at first order, leading to new contributions to sfermion masses and expanding the model's parameter space.

Contribution

It provides a general analysis of D-tadpole contributions beyond the first order and examines simple models where these effects are significant.

Findings

D-tadpole contributions can be of the same magnitude as radiative effects.

Models without strict messenger parity can still be viable.

Two-loop D-tadpole effects may have mild divergences.

Abstract

We revisit models of gauge mediated supersymmetry breaking where messenger parity is violated. Such a symmetry is usually invoked in order to set to zero potentially dangerous hypercharge D-term tadpoles. A milder hypothesis is that the D-tadpole vanishes only at the first order in the gauge coupling constant. Then the next order leads to a contribution to the sfermion masses which is of the same magnitude as the usual radiative one. This enlarges the parameter space of gauge mediated models. We first give a completely general characterization of this contribution, in terms of particular three-point functions of hidden sector current multiplet operators. We then explore the parameter space by means of two simple weakly coupled models, where the D-tadpole arising at two-loops has actually a mild logarithmic divergence.