Brane Mediated Supersymmetry Breaking

We propose a mechanism for mediating supersymmetry breaking in Type I string constructions. The basic set-up consists of a system of three D-branes: two parallel D-branes, a matter D-brane and a source D-brane, with supersymmetry breaking communicated via a third D-brane, the mediating D-brane, which intersects both of the parallel D-branes. We discuss an example in which the first and second family matter fields correspond to open strings living on the intersection of the matter D-brane and mediating D-brane, while the gauge fields, Higgs doublets and third family matter fields correspond to open strings living on the mediating D-brane. As in gaugino mediated models, the gauginos and Higgs doublets receive direct soft masses from the source brane, and flavour-changing neutral currents are naturally suppressed since the first and second family squarks and sleptons receive suppressed soft masses. However, unlike the gaugino mediated model, the third family squarks and sleptons receive unsuppressed soft masses, resulting in a very distinctive spectrum with heavier stops, sbottoms and staus.Comment: Version to appear in Nucl.Phys.B. 28 pages, Late

Supersymmetry breaking with quasi-localized fields in orbifold field theories

We study the Scherk-Schwarz supersymmetry breaking in five-dimensional orbifold theories with five-dimensional fields which are not strictly localized on the boundaries (quasi-localized fields). We show that the Scherk-Schwarz (SS) mechanism, besides the SS parameter \omega, depends upon new parameters, e.g. supersymmetric five-dimensional odd mass terms, governing the level of localization on the boundaries of the five-dimensional fields and study in detail such a dependence. Taking into account radiative corrections, the value of \omega is dynamically allowed to acquire any value in the range 0< \omega < 1/2.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure

Phenomenology of twisted moduli in type I string inspired models

We make a first study of the phenomenological implications of twisted moduli in type I intersecting D5-brane models, focussing on the resulting predictions at the LHC using SOFTSUSY to estimate the Higgs and sparticle spectra. Twisted moduli can play an important role in giving a viable string realisation of sequestering in the limit where supersymmetry breaking comes entirely from the twisted moduli. We focus on a particular string inspired version of gaugino mediation in which the first two families are localised at the intersection between D5-branes, whereas the third family and Higgs doublets are allowed to move within the world-volume of one of the branes. The soft supersymmetry breaking third family sfermion mass terms are then in general non-degenerate with the first two families. We place constraints upon parameter space and predictions of flavour changing neutral current effects. Twisted moduli domination is studied and, as well as solving the most serious part of the SUSY flavour problem, is shown to be highly constrained. The constraints are weakened by switching on gravity-mediated contributions from the dilaton and untwisted T-moduli sectors. In the twisted moduli domination limit we predict a stop-heavy MSSM spectrum and quasi-degenerate lightest neutralino and chargino states with wino-dominated mass eigenstates

Supersymmetric Higgs bosons in a 5D orbifold model

We analyze the phenomenology of the Higgs sector in a 5D model compactified on an S1/Z2 orbifold where the compactification scale MC is around the TeV scale. We show that the conventional MSSM Higgs boson mass bounds in 4D can be violated when we allow the gauge sector, Higgs and third family multiplets to live in the fifth extra dimension. Supersymmetry is broken at an orbifold fixed point which is spatially separated from the Yukawa brane where two chiral families are localized. When the brane-localized supersymmetry breaking term for the stop sector is arbitrarily large, we find that the stop KK-mode mass spectrum is completely independent of the Higgs fields. Hence, the Higgs masses only receive radiative contributions from the top KK-modes. The 1-loop effective potential is insensitive to the cutoff scale of the theory and yields a negative Higgs squared-mass contribution that triggers electroweak symmetry breaking in the range 1.5tan?20, where bottom/sbottom loop effects can be ignored. The recent LEP Higgs bound at mh0&gt;114.1 GeV, in conjunction with naturalness arguments, allows us to bracket the compactification scale 1.5MC4 TeV. Within this parameter space, we find that the lightest Higgs boson mass has an upper bound mh0160 GeV with the magnitude of the ?-parameter restricted to the range 33|?|347 GeV.<br/