Radiatively Induced Breaking of Conformal Symmetry in a Superpotential

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how quantum effects can induce spontaneous breaking of supersymmetry and conformal symmetry in a toy model, leading to condensates and masses for scalar and fermion fields, with potential implications for the Standard Model.

Contribution

It shows that radiative corrections can break conformal and supersymmetry in a superfield model, connecting quantum infrared singularities to symmetry breaking mechanisms.

Findings

Quantum infrared singularity in the superfield's self-interaction.

Effective potential via Coleman-Weinberg mechanism induces condensates.

Spontaneous breaking of supersymmetry and conformal symmetry occurs.

Abstract

Radiatively induced symmetry breaking is considered for a toy model with one scalar and one fermion field unified in a superfield. It is shown that the classical quartic self-interaction of the superfield possesses a quantum infrared singularity. Application of the Coleman-Weinberg mechanism for effective potential leads to the appearance of condensates and masses for both scalar and fermion components. That induces a spontaneous breaking of the initial classical symmetries: the supersymmetry and the conformal one. The energy scales for the scalar and fermion condensates appear to be of the same order, while the renormalization scale is many orders of magnitude higher. A possibility to relate the considered toy model to conformal symmetry breaking in the Standard Model is discussed.