The Fate of Nearly Supersymmetric Vacua

Abstract

Supersymmetric vacua are stable. It is interesting to ask: how long-lived are vacua which are nearly supersymmetric? This question is relevant if our universe is approximately supersymmetric. It is also of importance for a number of issues of the physics of the landscape and eternal inflation. In this note, we distinguish a variety of cases. In all of them the decay is slow. For a flat space theory decaying to a deep AdS vacuum, the leading behavior of the decay amplitude, if a thin wall approximation is valid, is $\mathcal{A}=\gamma e^{-2{\pi }^2/(\mathrm{Re}{m}_{3/2}{)}^2}$ (where the phase of $m_{3/2}$ is defined in the text) for $\mathrm{Re}{m}_{3/2}>0$, and zero otherwise. Metastable supersymmetry breaking generally yields parametrically more rapid decays. For nearly supersymmetric decays, we will see that it is necessary to compute subleading terms in the exponential to extraordinarily high accuracy before one can meaningfully discuss the prefactor.

19 pages

References in corpus (8)

• Dynamical SUSY Breaking in Meta-Stable Vacua
• Retrofitting O'Raifeartaigh Models with Dynamical Scales
• Domain walls, near-BPS bubbles, and probabilities in the landscape
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Cited by in corpus (3)

• Obstacles to Constructing de Sitter Space in String Theory
• Decay of False Vacuum via Fuzzy Monopole in String Theory
• Entanglement, Trace Anomaly and Confinement in QCD