Higher-Derivative Chiral Superfield Actions Coupled to N=1 Supergravity

TL;DR

This paper develops N=1 supergravity models with higher-derivative scalar actions, revealing new potential energy structures and applying the formalism to brane models, with implications for particle physics and cosmology.

Contribution

It provides a systematic way to extend higher-derivative scalar theories to supergravity, including novel potential energy expressions without superpotentials.

Findings

Auxiliary fields elimination modifies kinetic and potential terms.

Potential energy can be generated without superpotentials.

Higher-derivative DBI action coupled to supergravity shows negative potential regimes.

Abstract

We construct N=1 supergravity extensions of scalar field theories with higher-derivative kinetic terms. Special attention is paid to the auxiliary fields, whose elimination leads not only to corrections to the kinetic terms, but to new expressions for the potential energy as well. For example, a potential energy can be generated even in the absence of a superpotential. Our formalism allows one to write a supergravity extension of any higher-derivative scalar field theory and, therefore, has applications to both particle physics and cosmological model building. As an illustration, we couple the higher-derivative DBI action describing a 3-brane in 6-dimensions to N=1 supergravity. This displays a number of new features-- including the fact that, in the regime where the higher-derivative kinetic terms become important, the potential tends to be everywhere negative.