50 Years of SUSY and SUGRA, circa 1974-2024, and Future Prospects

TL;DR

This paper reviews fifty years of developments in supersymmetry and supergravity, highlighting their theoretical progress, experimental searches, and implications for cosmology and fundamental physics from 1974 to 2024.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the historical evolution, key breakthroughs, and future prospects of SUSY and SUGRA over five decades.

Findings

Significant progress in unification theories of fundamental interactions.

Ongoing experimental searches for supersymmetry at various scales.

Impact of SUSY and SUGRA on cosmology, dark matter, and dark energy theories.

Abstract

The development in the early seventies of supersymmetry, in the mid-seventies of gauge supersymmetry and supergravity, and in the early eighties of gravity mediated breaking of supersymmetry and of supergravity grand unification have led to remarkable progress in the pursuit of unification of fundamental interactions of particle physics. They have also led to the intertwining of particle physics, cosmology, and strings. Since supersymmetry and supergravity are manifest in the low energy limit of superstring below the Planck scale, experimental test of them are of interest regarding the validity of the superstring itself. For that reason, over the past decades, after the advent of supersymmetry and SUGRA models, there have been sustained experimental searches for supersymmetry at colliders, in precision experiments, and in astrophysical and cosmological data. The SUSY and SUGRA models have also had deep impact on theories related to inflation, dark matter, and dark energy. The purpose of this article is to provide a view from the bridge of these developments over the past fifty years circa 1974-2024.