Spontaneous Supersymmetric Generation of an Indeterminate Mass Scale and a Possible Light Sterile Neutrino

TL;DR

This paper explores how spontaneous breaking of a global continuous symmetry in a supersymmetric theory can generate an indeterminate mass scale and potentially produce a light sterile neutrino, with implications for particle physics models.

Contribution

It demonstrates that an indeterminate mass scale naturally arises from spontaneous symmetry breaking in supersymmetry, and suggests a mechanism for light sterile neutrino emergence.

Findings

Indeterminate mass scale is generated without explicit symmetry breaking.

A seesaw texture for fermions suggests a light sterile neutrino.

The feature persists after gauging symmetry or breaking supersymmetry.

Abstract

If a global continuous symmetry of a supersymmetric field theory is spontaneously broken while preserving the supersymmetry, the resulting theory has a massless superfield. One of its two bosonic degrees of freedom is the familiar phase rotation of the usual massless Nambu-Goldstone boson, but the other is a scale transformation. An indeterminate mass scale is thus generated. In the fermion sector, a seesaw texture appears which may be suitable for a possible light sterile neutrino. This feature persists even after the gauging of the continuous symmetry or the breaking of the supersymmetry to resolve the aforementioned mass-scale ambiguity.