Effective Supergravity from Heterotic M-Theory and its Phenomenological Implications

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent advances in deriving four-dimensional supergravity models from heterotic M-theory compactifications, analyzing phenomenological implications like supersymmetry breaking and unification scales, including effects of five-branes.

Contribution

It provides a macroscopic expansion of heterotic M-theory effective supergravity, matching higher order corrections with string theory and exploring phenomenological consequences.

Findings

Higher order Kähler potential terms match heterotic string corrections

Conditions for gauge coupling unification at 3×10^{16} GeV or lower

Analysis of soft supersymmetry-breaking terms and stability issues

Abstract

In this talk I summarize several recent results concerning the four-dimensional effective supergravity obtained using a Calabi-Yau compactification of the $E_8\times E_8$ heterotic string from M-theory. A simple macroscopic study is provided expanding the theory in powers of two dimensionless variables. Higher order terms in the K\"ahler potential are identified and matched with the heterotic string corrections. In the context of this M-theory expansion, I discuss several phenomenological issues: universality of soft scalar masses, relations between the different scales of the theory (eleven-dimensional Planck mass, compactification scale and orbifold scale) in order to obtain unification at $3\times 10^{16}$ GeV or lower values, soft supersymmetry-breaking terms, and finally charge and colour breaking minima. The above analyses are also carried out in the presence of (non-perturbative) five-branes.