Dark Energy and the MSSM

TL;DR

This paper explores how coupling quintessence to matter within supergravity frameworks affects supersymmetry breaking, fermion masses, and fundamental constants, with implications for fifth forces and equivalence principle violations.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the interplay between quintessence, supersymmetry breaking, and the MSSM, including explicit calculations of fermion mass dependence on the quintessence field.

Findings

Fermion masses depend on the quintessence field via Higgs mechanism.

Potential violations of equivalence principle due to Higgs VEVs being quintessence-dependent.

Modifications to dark matter and baryonic matter scaling and possible variations in fundamental constants.

Abstract

We consider the coupling of quintessence to observable matter in supergravity and study the dynamics of both supersymmetry breaking and quintessence in this context. We investigate how the quintessence potential is modified by supersymmetry breaking and analyse the structure of the soft supersymmetry breaking terms. We pay attention to their dependence on the quintessence field and to the electroweak symmetry breaking, ie the pattern of fermion masses at low energy within the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) coupled to quintessence. In particular, we compute explicitly how the fermion masses generated through the Higgs mechanism depend on the quintessence field for a general model of quintessence. Fifth force and equivalence principle violations are potentially present as the vacuum expectation values of the Higgs bosons become quintessence field dependent. We emphasize that equivalence principle violations are a generic consequence of the fact that, in the MSSM, the fermions couple differently to the two Higgs doublets. Finally, we also discuss how the scaling of the cold dark and baryonic matter energy density is modified and comment on the possible variation of the gauge coupling constants, among which is the fine structure constant, and of the proton-electron mass ratio