Charge asymmetry in two-Higgs doublet models

We discuss the features of a two-Higgs doublet model exhibiting a two stage phase transition. At finite temperatures electric charge violating stationary points are developed. In conjunction with {\em CP} violation in the Higgs or the Yukawa sector, the phase transition to the charge conserving vacuum, generates a net charge asymmetry $\Delta Q$, in the presence of heavy leptons, which may be well above the astrophysical bounds put on $\Delta Q$ unless the heavy leptons are sufficiently massive. This type of transition may be of relevance for supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model, since it shares the same features, namely two Higgs doublets and similar {\em CP} violating sources.Comment: 20 pages, LaTeX file, 5 eps figures included using epsfig macro. Major revisio

Neutralino Relic Density with a Cosmological Constant confronts Electroweak Precision Measurements

We discuss the relic density of the lightest of the supersymmetric particles ({\small LSP}) in view of new cosmological data, which favour the concept of an accelerating Universe with a non-vanishing cosmological constant. The new bound on the Cold Dark Matter density, $\Omega_{\mathrm{CDM}} h_0^2 \lesssim 0.22$, puts stringent constraints on supersymmetry preferring low supersymmetry breaking scales, in sharp contrast to electroweak precision measurements favouring large supersymmetry breaking scales. Supersymmetric predictions are in agreement with cosmological data and electroweak precision data in the window of the parameter space: m_0<200\GeV, 300\GeV, putting bounds on sparticle masses, which may be evaded if $m_{LSP} <m_{{\tilde{\tau}}_R} \lesssim 1.2 m_{LSP}$.Comment: 17 pages, LaTeX, 10 Postscript figures; version to appear in Phys. Lett.

Dissipative Liouville Cosmology: A Case Study

We consider solutions of the cosmological equations pertaining to a dissipative, dilaton-driven off-equilibrium Liouville Cosmological model, which may describe the effective field theoretic limit of a non-critical string model of the Universe. The non-criticality may be the result of an early-era catastrophic cosmic event, such as a big-bang, brane-world collision etc. The evolution of the various cosmological parameters of the model are obtained, and the effects of the dilaton and off-shell Liouville terms, including briefly those on relic densities, which distinguish the model from conventional cosmologies, are emphasised.Comment: 19 pages latex, 11 eps figures incorporate

WMAPing out Supersymmetric Dark Matter and Phenomenology

The recent WMAP data provide a rather restricted range of the Cold Dark Matter (CDM) density $\Omega_{CDM} h^2$ of unprecedented accuracy. We combine these new data along with data from BNL E821 experiment measuring ${(g_{\mu}-2)}$, $$the {b\goes s \gamma} branching ratio and the light Higgs boson mass bound from LEP, to update our analysis of the allowed boundaries in the parameter space of the Constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (CMSSM). The prospects of measuring Supersymmetry at LHC look like a very safe bet, and the potential of discovering SUSY particles at a $\sqrt{s} = 1.1 \mathrm{TeV}$ linear collider is enhanced considerably. The implications for Dark Matter direct searches are also discussed.Comment: 12 pages LaTeX, 5 eps figures included, references adde

Trilinear Gauge Boson Couplings in the MSSM

We study the C and P even WW\gamma and WWZ trilinear gauge boson vertices (TGV's), in the context of the MSSM assuming that the external W's are on their mass shell. We find that for energies less than 200 GeV squark and slepton contributions to the aforementioned couplings are two orders of magnitude smaller than those of the Standard Model (SM). In the same energy range the bulk of the supersymmetric Higgs corrections to the TGV's is due to the lightest neutral Higgs, h_0, whose contribution is like that of a Standard Model Higgs of the same mass. The contributions of the Neutralinos and Charginos are sensitive to the input value for the soft gaugino mass M_{1/2}, being more pronounced for values M_{1/2} < 100 GeV. In this case and in the unphysical region, 0 < \sqrt{s} < 2 M_W , their contributions are substantially enhanced resulting in large corrections to the static quantities of the W boson. However, such an enhancement is not observed in the physical region. In general for 2 M_W < \sqrt{s} < 200 GeV the MSSM predictions differ from those of the SM but they are of the same order of magnitude. To be detectable deviations from the SM require sensitivities reaching the per mille level and hence unlikely to be observed at LEP200. For higher energies SM and MSSM predictions exhibit a fast fall off behaviour, in accord with unitarity requirements, getting smaller,in most cases, by almost an order of magnitude already at energies \sqrt{s} 0.5 TeV.Comment: 16 pages, late

Supersymmetric QCD corrections to the W-boson width

We calculate the one-loop supersymmetric QCD corrections to the width of the $W$-boson. We find that these are of order $\sim {{ \alpha_s} \over {\pi}} {1 \over 20} { {M^2_W} \over {M_S^2}} \Gamma_{u {\bar d}}$, where $M_S$ is the supersymmetry breaking scale and $\Gamma_{u {\bar d}}$ the tree level hadronic width for $W^+ \rightarrow u {\bar d}$. Due to the appearance of the suppression factor $\sim {1 \over 20}$ these are at least two orders of magnitude smaller than the standard QCD corrections $\sim {{ \alpha_s} \over {\pi}} \Gamma_{u {\bar d}}$ and hence of the order of the two-loop electroweak effects. Therefore supersymmetric QCD corrections will only be of relevance once experiments reach that level of accuracy.Comment: 7 pages, LaTeX file with 2 figures, uses epsf macro

Refining the predictions of supersymmetric CP-violating models: A top-down approach

We explore in detail the consequences of the CP-violating phases residing in the supersymmetric and soft SUSY breaking parameters in the approximation that family flavour mixings are ignored. We allow for non-universal boundary conditions and in such a consideration the model is described by twelve independent CP-violating phases and one angle which misaligns the vacuum expectation values (VEVs) of the Higgs scalars. We run two-loop renormalization group equations (RGEs), for all parameters involved, including phases, and we properly treat the minimization conditions using the one-loop effective potential with CP-violating phases included. We show that the two-loop running of phases may induce sizable effects for the electric dipole moments (EDMs) that are absent in the one-loop RGE analysis. Also important corrections to the EDMs are induced by the Higgs VEVs misalignment angle which are sizable in the large tanb region. Scanning the available parameter space we seek regions compatible with accelerator and cosmological data with emphasis on rapid neutralino annihilations through a Higgs resonance. It is shown that large CP-violating phases, as required in Baryogenesis scenarios, can be tuned to obtain agreement with WMAP3 cold dark matter constraints, EDMs and all available accelerator data, in extended regions of the parameter space which may be accessible to LHC.Comment: 41 pages, 22 eps figures. A reference added and a typo corrected; version to appear in JHE

The soft supersymmetry breaking in D=5 supergravity compactified on S_1/Z_2 orbifolds

We study the origin of the supersymmetry breaking induced by the mediation of gravity and the radion multiplet from the hidden to the visible brane in the context of the N=2, D=5 supergravity compactified on S_1/Z_2 orbifolds. The soft supersymmetry breaking terms for scalar masses, trilinear scalar couplings and gaugino masses are calculated to leading order in the five dimensional Newton's constant k_5^2 and the gravitino mass m_{3/2}. These are finite and non-vanishing, with the scalar soft masses be non-tachyonic, and are all expressed in terms of the gravitino mass and the length scale R of the fifth dimension. The soft supersymmetry breaking parameters are thus correlated and the phenomenological implications are discussed.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures, 1 Table, final version to appear in Physics Letters B, slightly shortened, comments added, typos correcte

Role of beam polarization in the determination of WWγWW\gamma and WWZWWZ couplings from e+e−→W+W−e^+e^-\to W^+W^-

We evaluate the constraints on anomalous trilinear gauge-boson couplings that can be obtained from the study of electron-positron annihilation into $W$ pairs at a facility with either the electron beam longitudinally polarized or both electron and positron beams transversely polarized. The energy ranges considered in the analysis are the ones relevant to the next-linear collider and to LEP~200. We discuss the possibilities of a model independent analysis of the general $CP$ conserving anomalous effective Lagrangian, as well as its restriction to some specific models with reduced number of independent couplings. The combination of observables with initial and final state polarizations allows to separately constrain the different couplings and to improve the corresponding numerical bounds.Comment: 24 pages, LaTeX, 9 figures (available on request from the authors

Low Energy Thresholds and the Renormalization Group in the MSSM

We derive the 1-loop Renormalization Group Equations for the parameters of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) taking into account the successive decoupling of each sparticle below its threshold. This is realized by a step function at the level of each graph contributing to the Renormalization Group Equations.Comment: 10 pages , Latex, no figure