Quintessence and the Underlying Particle Physics Theory

At present we know nothing about the nature of the dark energy accounting for about 70% of the energy density of the Universe. One possibility is that the dark energy is provided by an extremely light field, the quintessence, rolling down its potential. Even though the underlying particle theory responsible for the present quintessential behaviour of our Universe is unknown, such a theory is likely to have contact with supersymmetry, supergravity or (super)string theory. In these theories, there are plenty of scalar fields (moduli) which are gravitationally coupled to all the other degrees of freedom and have vacuum expectation values of the order of the Planck scale. We point out that, in theories which allow a consistent embedding of quintessence, the generic gravitational interaction of the moduli fields with the quintessence field gives rise to a contribution to the energy density from the moduli fields of the order of the critical energy density of the universe today. Furthermore, the interaction contribution can generically enhance the negativity of the equation of state.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figure; expanded discussion of generality; version to be published by PL

Supersymmetry and the positron excess in cosmic rays

Recently the HEAT balloon experiment has confirmed an excess of high-energy positrons in cosmic rays. They could come from annihilation of dark matter in the galactic halo. We discuss expectations for the positron signal in cosmic rays from the lightest superpartner. The simplest interpretations are incompatible with the size and shape of the excess if the relic LSPs evolved from thermal equilbrium. Non-thermal histories can describe a sufficient positron rate. Reproducing the energy spectrum is more challenging, but perhaps possible. The resulting light superpartner spectrum is compatible with collider physics, the muon anomalous magnetic moment, Z-pole electroweak data, and other dark matter searches.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, references added, minor wording change

Gauge vs. Gravity mediation in models with anomalous U(1)'s

In an attempt to implement gauge mediation in string theory, we study string effective supergravity models of supersymmetry breaking, containing anomalous gauge factors. We discuss subtleties related to gauge invariance and the stabilization of the Green-Schwarz moduli, which set non-trivial constraints on the transmission of supersymmetry breaking to MSSM via gauge interactions. Given those constraints, it is difficult to obtain the dominance of gauge mediation over gravity mediation. Furthermore, generically the gauge contributions to soft terms contain additional non-standard terms coming from D-term contributions. Motivated by this, we study the phenomenology of recently proposed hybrid models, where gravity and gauge mediations compete at the GUT scale, and show that such a scenario can respect WMAP constraints and would be easily testable at LHC.Comment: 40 pages, 5 figure

Super-conservative interpretation of muon g-2 results applied to supersymmetry

The recent developments in theory and experiment related to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon are applied to supersymmetry. We follow a very cautious course, demanding that the supersymmetric contributions fit within five standard deviations of the difference between experiment and the standard model prediction. Arbitrarily small supersymmetric contributions are then allowed, so no upper bounds on superpartner masses result. Nevertheless, non-trivial exclusions are found. We characterize the substantial region of parameter space ruled out by this analysis that has not been probed by any previous experiment. We also discuss some implications of the results for forthcoming collider experiments.Comment: 10 pages, latex, 3 fig

The Z-Z' Mass Hierarchy in a Supersymmetric Model with a Secluded U(1)'-Breaking Sector

We consider the Z'/Z mass hierarchy in a supersymmetric model in which the U(1)' is broken in a secluded sector coupled to the ordinary sector only by gauge and possibly soft terms. A large mass hierarchy can be achieved while maintaining the normal sparticle spectra if there is a direction in which the tree level potential becomes flat when a particular Yukawa coupling vanishes. We describe the conditions needed for the desired breaking pattern, to avoid unwanted global symmetries, and for an acceptable effective mu parameter. The electroweak breaking is dominated by A terms rather than scalar masses, leading to tan beta ~ 1. The spectrum of the symmetry breaking sector is displayed. There is significant mixing between the MSSM particles and new standard model singlets, for both the Higgs scalars and the neutralinos. A larger Yukawa coupling for the effective mu parameter is allowed than in the NMSSM because of the U(1)' contribution to the running from a high scale. The upper bound on the tree-level mass of the lightest CP even Higgs doublet mass is about c x 174 GeV, where c is of order unity, but the actual mass eigenvalues are generally smaller because of singlet mixing.Comment: Latex, 12 Tables, 22 page

Sparticle masses in deflected mirage mediation

We discuss the sparticle mass patterns that can be realized in deflected mirage mediation scenario of supersymmetry breaking, in which the moduli, anomaly, and gauge mediations all contribute to the MSSM soft parameters. Analytic expression of low energy soft parameters and also the sfermion mass sum rules are derived, which can be used to interpret the experimentally measured sparticle masses within the framework of the most general mixed moduli-gauge-anomaly mediation. Phenomenological aspects of some specific examples are also discussed.Comment: 43 pages, 17 figures, references adde

Gauge Unification in Supersymmetric Intersecting Brane Worlds

We show that contrary to first expectations realistic three generation supersymmetric intersecting brane world models give rise to phenomenologically interesting predictions about gauge coupling unification. Assuming the most economical way of realizing the matter content of the MSSM via intersecting branes we obtain a model independent relation among the three gauge coupling constants at the string scale. In order to correctly reproduce the experimentally known values of sin^2[theta_W(M_z)] and alpha_s(M_z) this relation leads to natural gauge coupling unification at a string scale close to the standard GUT scale 2 x 10^16 GeV. Additional vector-like matter can push the unification scale up to the Planck scale.Comment: 18 pages, harvmac & 3 figures; v2: one ref. adde

Neutralino Dark Matter in an SO(10) Model with Two-step Intermediate Scale Symmetry Breaking

We consider a supersymmetric Grand Unified Theory (GUT) based on the gauge group SO(10) suggested by Aulakh et al., which features two--step intermediate symmetry breaking, $SO(10) \to SU(4)_C \times SU(2)_L \times SU(2)_R \to SU(3)_C \times U(1)_{B-L} \times SU(2)_L \times SU(2)_R \to SU(3)_C \times SU(2)_L \times U(1)_Y$. {\bf $45, 54, 126+\overline{126}$} dimensional representations of Higgs superfields are employed to achieve this symmetry breaking chain. We also introduce a second, very heavy, pair of Higgs doublets, which modifies the Yukawa couplings of matter fields relative to minimal SO(10) predictions. We analyze the differences in the low energy phenomenology compared to that of mSUGRA, assuming universal soft breaking scalar masses, gaugino masses and trilinear couplings at the GUT scale. We find that thermal neutralino Dark Matter remains viable in this scenario, although for small and moderate values of $\tan\beta$ the allowed region is even more highly constrained than in mSUGRA, and depends strongly on the the light neutrino masses.Comment: 17 figure

Bottom-Tau Unification in SUSY SU(5) GUT and Constraints from b to s gamma and Muon g-2

An analysis is made on bottom-tau Yukawa unification in supersymmetric (SUSY) SU(5) grand unified theory (GUT) in the framework of minimal supergravity, in which the parameter space is restricted by some experimental constraints including Br(b to s gamma) and muon g-2. The bottom-tau unification can be accommodated to the measured branching ratio Br(b to s gamma) if superparticle masses are relatively heavy and higgsino mass parameter \mu is negative. On the other hand, if we take the latest muon g-2 data to require positive SUSY contributions, then wrong-sign threshold corrections at SUSY scale upset the Yukawa unification with more than 20 percent discrepancy. It has to be compensated by superheavy threshold corrections around the GUT scale, which constrains models of flavor in SUSY GUT. A pattern of the superparticle masses preferred by the three requirements is also commented.Comment: 21pages, 6figure

Supersymmetric Dark Matter and Yukawa Unification

An analysis of supersymmetric dark matter under the Yukawa unification constraint is given. The analysis utilizes the recently discovered region of the parameter space of models with gaugino mass nonuniversalities where large negative supersymmetric corrections to the b quark mass appear to allow $b-\tau$ unification for a positive $\mu$ sign consistent with the $b\to s+\gamma$ and $g_{\mu}-2$ constraints. In the present analysis we use the revised theoretical determination of $a_{\mu}^{SM}$ ($a_{\mu}= (g_{\mu}-2)/2$) in computing the difference $a_{\mu}^{exp}-a_{\mu}^{SM}$ which takes account of a reevaluation of the light by light contribution which has a positive sign. The analysis shows that the region of the parameter space with nonuniversalities of the gaugino masses which allows for unification of Yukawa couplings also contains regions which allow satisfaction of the relic density constraint. Specifically we find that the lightest neutralino mass consistent with the relic density constraint, $b\tau$ unification for SU(5) and $b-t-\tau$ unification for SO(10) in addition to other constraints lies in the region below 80 GeV. An analysis of the maximum and the minimum neutralino-proton scalar cross section for the allowed parameter space including the effect of a new determination of the pion-nucleon sigma term is also given. It is found that the full parameter space for this class of models can be explored in the next generation of proposed dark matter detectors.Comment: 28 pages,nLatex including 5 fig