Can Hidden Gauginos Form Condensates?

Supersymmetry breaking may be linked to the formation of gaugino condensates in a hidden sector. In this work, the process of formation of the condensate is examined in a cosmological context, using an effective field theory of the gaugino bilinear which provides a reasonable interpolation between the high- and low-temperature phases. The implementation of anomaly requirements generates a large potential barrier between the zero-condensate configuration and that of the true (SUSY-breaking) vacuum. As a consequence, the transition to bubbles of true vacuum may be subject to an enormous exponential suppression. This leads to the same difficulties with inhomogeneity of the universe which occurred in the original inflationary scenarios.Comment: 15 pages, LaTex, 1 figure in uuencoded postscript fil

Protecting unparticles from the MSSM Higgs sector

We construct a model of an unparticle sector consisting of a supersymmetric SU(N) gauge theory with the number of flavors in the Seiberg conformal window. We couple this sector to the MSSM via heavy messengers. The resulting low energy theory has a Higgs coupling to unparticles. The Higgs vev drives the hidden Seiberg sector to a new conformal fixed point. The coupling to the Higgs mediates supersymmetry breaking to the Seiberg sector, and breaks conformal invariance at a lower scale. The low energy theory contains light stable and metastable mesons. Higgs decay into this sector gives signatures which are similar to those of "hidden valley" models. Decays of the lightest superpartner of standard model particles into the hidden sector reveal potentially observable unparticle kinematics.Comment: References added. 11 pages, 4 figure

SUSY Unparticle and Conformal Sequestering

We investigate unparticle physics with supersymmetry (SUSY). The SUSY breaking effects due to the gravity mediation induce soft masses for the SUSY unparticles and hence break the conformal invariance. The unparticle physics observable in near future experiments is only consistent if the SUSY breaking effects from the hidden sector to the standard model sector are dominated by the gauge mediation, or if the SUSY breaking effects to the unparticle sector is sufficiently sequestered. We argue that the natural realization of the latter possibility is the conformal sequestering scenario.Comment: 12 pages, v2: small comment added on conformal invariance vs scale invarianc

Exact results for non-holomorphic masses in softly broken supersymmetric gauge theories

We consider strongly coupled supersymmetric gauge theories softly broken by the addition of gaugino masses $m_\lambda$ and (non-holomorphic) scalar masses $m^2$, taken to be small relative to the dynamical scale $\Lambda$. For theories with a weakly coupled dual description in the infrared, we compute exactly the leading soft masses for the "magnetic" degrees of freedom, with uncalculable corrections suppressed by powers of $(m_{\lambda}/\Lambda), (m/\Lambda)$. The exact relations hold between the infrared fixed point "magnetic" soft masses and the ultraviolet fixed point "electric" soft masses, and correspond to a duality mapping for soft terms. We briefly discuss implications of these results for the vacuum structure of these theories.Comment: 11 pages, late

Dynamics of 3D SUSY Gauge Theories with Antisymmetric Matter

We investigate the IR dynamics of N=2 SUSY gauge theories in 3D with antisymmetric matter. The presence of the antisymmetric fields leads to further splitting of the Coulomb branch. Counting zero modes in the instanton background suggests that more than a single direction along the Coulomb branch may remain unlifted. We examine the case of SU(4) with one or two antisymmetric fields and various flavors in detail. Using the results for the corresponding 4D theories, we find the IR dynamics of the 3D cases via compactification and a real mass deformation. We find that for the s-confining case with two antisymmetric fields, a second unlifted Coulomb branch direction indeed appears in the low-energy dynamics. We present several non-trivial consistency checks to establish the validity of these results. We also comment on the expected structure of general s-confining theories in 3D, which might involve several unlifted Coulomb branch directions.Comment: 18 pages + appendices and references, 3 figures; v2: references corrected and update

Lectures on supersymmetric gauge theories and electric-magnetic duality

We review some of the recent work on the dynamics of four dimensional, supersymmetric gauge theories. The kinematics are largely determined by holomorphy and the dynamics are governed by duality. The results shed light on the phases of gauge theories. Some results and interpretations which have not been published before are also included.Comment: 44 pages, uses harvma

Thermodynamics of Hidden Sector Gaugino Condensation in the Expanding Universe

This work examines the confining-deconfining phase transition in a hidden Yang Mills sector with scale $\Lambda \sim 10^{14}$ GeV appropriate to dilaton stabilization and SUSY-breaking via formation of a gaugino consensate. If the transition is assumed to take place through homogenous nucleation, then under reasonable assumptions it is found that a critical bubble, formed at a temperature which provides enough supercooling, is not large enough to accommodate an adequate number (\gsim 100) of quanta of the confined phase (`hidden hadrons') to allow a consistent thermodynamic description. Thus, a first order transition in the hidden sector may not be possible in the expanding universe.Comment: 13 pages LaTex, no figure

Singlet-Stabilized Minimal Gauge Mediation

We propose Singlet Stabilized Minimal Gauge Mediation as a simple ISS-based model of Direct Gauge Mediation which avoids both light gauginos and Landau poles. The hidden sector is a massive s-confining SQCD that is distinguished by a minimal SU(5) flavor group. The uplifted vacuum is stabilized by coupling the meson to an additional singlet sector with its own U(1) gauge symmetry via non-renormalizable interactions suppressed by a higher scale Lambda_UV in the electric theory. This generates a nonzero VEV for the singlet meson via the inverted hierarchy mechanism, but requires tuning to a precision ~ (Lambda/Lambda_UV)^2, which is ~ 10^{-4}. In the course of this analysis we also outline some simple model-building rules for stabilizing uplifted ISS models, which lead us to conclude that meson deformations are required (or at least heavily favored) to stabilize the adjoint component of the magnetic meson.Comment: 26 pages, 3 figures (fixed typos