Nielsen-Olesen strings in Supersymmetric models

TL;DR

This paper studies cosmic string formation in supersymmetric models, demonstrating that strings persist beyond the Bogomol'nyi limit and remain stable with supersymmetry-breaking mass terms, especially in N=2 supersymmetry.

Contribution

It provides numerical analysis of cosmic strings in supersymmetric models beyond the Bogomol'nyi limit and explores their stability with supersymmetry-breaking terms, including N=2 extensions.

Findings

Cosmic strings form in the scalar sector of N=1 supersymmetric QED.

Strings remain stable when supersymmetry-breaking mass terms are added.

N=2 supersymmetry with breaking terms leads to stable cosmic strings.

Abstract

We investigate the behaviour of a model with two oppositely charged scalar fields. In the Bogomol'nyi limit this may be seen as the scalar sector of N=1 supersymmetric QED, and it has been shown that cosmic strings form. We examine numerically the model out of the Bogomol'nyi limit, and show that this remains the case. We then add supersymmetry-breaking mass terms to the supersymmetric model, and show that strings still survive. Finally we consider the extension to N=2 supersymmetry with supersymmetry-breaking mass terms, and show that this leads to the formation of stable cosmic strings, unlike in the unbroken case.