Brane gravity, massless bulk scalar and self-tuning of the cosmological constant

We show that a self-tuning mechanism of the cosmological constant could work in 5D non-compact space-time with a $Z_2$ symmetry in the presence of a massless scalar field. The standard model matter fields live only on the 4D brane. The change of vacuum energy on the brane (brane cosmological constant) by, for instance, electroweak and QCD phase transitions, just gives rise to dynamical shifts of the profiles of the background metric and the scalar field in the extra dimension, keeping 4D space-time flat without any fine-tuning. To avoid naked singularities in the bulk, the brane cosmological constant should be negative. We introduce an additional brane-localized 4D Einstein-Hilbert term so as to provide the observed 4D gravity with the non-compact extra dimension. With a general form of brane-localized gravity term allowed by the symmetries, the low energy Einstein gravity is successfully reproduced on the brane at long distances. We show this phenomenon explicitly for the case of vanishing bulk cosmological constant.Comment: 1+15 pages, no figure, Version to appear in PR

Anomaly Mediated Supersymmetry Breaking in Four Dimensions, Naturally

We present a simple four-dimensional model in which anomaly mediated supersymmetry breaking naturally dominates. The central ingredient is that the hidden sector is near a strongly-coupled infrared fixed-point for several decades of energy below the Planck scale. Strong renormalization effects then sequester the hidden sector from the visible sector. Supersymmetry is broken dynamically and requires no small input parameters. The model provides a natural and economical explanation of the hierarchy between the supersymmetry-breaking scale and the Planck scale, while allowing anomaly mediation to address the phenomenological challenges posed by weak scale supersymmetry. In particular, flavor-changing neutral currents are naturally near their experimental limits.Comment: 14 pages, Late

"Gaugomaly" Mediated SUSY Breaking and Conformal Sequestering

Anomaly-mediated supersymmetry breaking in the context of 4D conformally sequestered models is combined with Poppitz-Trivedi D-type gauge-mediation. The implementation of the two mediation mechanisms naturally leads to visible soft masses at the same scale so that they can cooperatively solve the mu and flavor problems of weak scale supersymmetry, as well as the tachyonic slepton problem of pure anomaly-mediation. The tools are developed in a modular fashion for more readily fitting into the general program of optimizing supersymmetric dynamics in hunting for the most attractive weak scale phenomenologies combined with Planck-scale plausibility.Comment: 14 pages, Late

Visible Effects of the Hidden Sector

The renormalization of operators responsible for soft supersymmetry breaking is usually calculated by starting at some high scale and including only visible sector interactions in the evolution equations, while ignoring hidden sector interactions. Here we explain why this is correct only for the most trivial structures in the hidden sector, and discuss possible implications. This investigation was prompted by the idea of conformal sequestering. In that framework hidden sector renormalizations by nearly conformal dynamics are critical. In the original models of conformal sequestering it was necessary to impose hidden sector flavor symmetries to achieve the sequestered form. We present models which can evade this requirement and lead to no-scale or anomaly mediated boundary conditions; but the necessary structures do not seem generic. More generally, the ratios of scalar masses to gaugino masses, the $\mu$-term, the $B\mu$-term, $A$-terms, and the gravitino mass can be significantly affected.Comment: 23 pages, no figure

Improved Single Sector Supersymmetry Breaking

Building on recent work by N. Arkani-Hamed and the present authors, we construct realistic models that break supersymmetry dynamically and give rise to composite quarks and leptons, all in a single strongly-coupled sector. The most important improvement compared to earlier models is that the second-generation composite states correspond to dimension-2 "meson" operators in the ultraviolet. This leads to a higher scale for flavor physics, and gives a completely natural suppression of flavor-changing neutral currents. We also construct models in which the hierarchy of Yukawa couplings is explained by the dimensionality of composite states. These models provide an interesting and viable alternative to gravity- and gauge-mediated models. The generic signatures are unification of scalar masses with different quantum numbers at the compositeness scale, and lighter gaugino, Higgsino, and third-generation squark and slepton masses. We also analyze large classes of models that give rise to both compositeness and supersymmetry breaking, based on gauge theories with confining, fixed-point, or free-magnetic dynamics.Comment: 34 pages, LaTeX2

Phase Transition in a One-Dimensional Extended Peierls-Hubbard Model with a Pulse of Oscillating Electric Field: II. Linear Behavior in Neutral-to-Ionic Transition

Dynamics of charge density and lattice displacements after the neutral phase is photoexcited is studied by solving the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation for a one-dimensional extended Peierls-Hubbard model with alternating potentials. In contrast to the ionic-to-neutral transition studied previously, the neutral-to-ionic transition proceeds in an uncooperative manner as far as the one-dimensional system is concerned. The final ionicity is a linear function of the increment of the total energy. After the electric field is turned off, the electronic state does not significantly change, roughly keeping the ionicity, even if the transition is not completed, because the ionic domains never proliferate. As a consequence, an electric field with frequency just at the linear absorption peak causes the neutral-to-ionic transition the most efficiently. These findings are consistent with the recent experiments on the mixed-stack organic charge-transfer complex, TTF-CA. We artificially modify or remove the electron-lattice coupling to discuss the origin of such differences between the two transitions.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figure

A Minimal Superstring Standard Model I: Flat Directions

Three family SU(3)_C x SU(2)_L x U(1)_Y string models in several constructions generically possess two features: (i) an extra local anomalous U(1)_A and (ii) numerous (often fractionally charged) exotic particles beyond those in the minimal supersymmetric model (MSSM). Recently, we demonstrated that the observable sector effective field theory of such a free fermionic string model can reduce to that of the MSSM, with the standard observable gauge group being just SU(3)_C x SU(2)_L x U(1)_Y and the SU(3)_C x SU(2)_L x U(1)_Y-charged spectrum of the observable sector consisting solely of the MSSM spectrum. An example of a model with this property was shown. We continue our investigation of this model by presenting a large set of different flat directions of the same model that all produce the MSSM spectrum. Our results suggest that even after imposing the conditions for the decoupling of exotic states, there may remain sufficient freedom to satisfy the remaining phenomenological constraints imposed by the observed data.Comment: 64 pages. Latex. Revisions to match version in Int. J. Mod. Physics

Composite Quarks and Leptons from Dynamical Supersymmetry Breaking without Messengers

We present new theories of dynamical SUSY breaking in which the strong interactions that break SUSY also give rise to composite quarks and leptons with naturally small Yukawa couplings. In these models, SUSY breaking is communicated directly to the composite fields without ``messenger'' interactions. The compositeness scale can be anywhere between 10 TeV and the Planck scale. These models can naturally solve the supersymmetric flavor problem, and generically predict sfermion mass unification independent from gauge unification.Comment: 27 pages, LaTeX; Clarified flavor symmetry of strong interactions; corrected overestimate of FCNC's; conclusions strengthene

Baryons with Many Colors and Flavors

Using recently-developed diagrammatic techniques, I derive some general results concerning baryons in the $1/N$ expansion, where $N$ is the number of QCD colors. I show that the spin-flavor relations which hold for baryons in the large-$N$ limit, as well as the form of the corrections to these relations at higher orders in $1/N$, hold even if $N_F / N \sim 1$, where $N_F$ is the number of light quark flavors. I also show that the amplitude for a baryon to emit $n$ mesons is $O(1 / N^{n / 2 - 1})$, and that meson loops attached to baryon lines are unsupressed in the large-$N$ limit, independent of $N_F$. For $N_F > 2$, there are ambiguities in the extrapolation away from $N = 3$ because the baryon flavor multiplets for a given spin grow with $N$. I argue that the $1/N$ expansion is valid for baryons with spin $O(1)$ and {\it arbitrary} flavor quantum numbers, including e.g. baryons with isospin and/or strangeness $O(N)$. This allows the formulation of a large-$N$ expansion in which it is not necessary to identify the physical baryons with particular large-$N$ states. $SU(N_F)$ symmetry can be made manifest to all orders in $1/N$, yet group theory factors must be evaluated explicitly only for $N_F = N = 3$. To illustrate this expansion, I consider the non-singlet axial currents, baryon mass splittings, and matrix elements of \mybar ss and \mybar s \gam_\mu \gam_5 s in the nucleon.Comment: 19 pages, plain TeX, 4 uuencoded postscrip figures, LBL-35539, NSF-ITP-94-4

New Mechanisms of Dynamical Supersymmetry Breaking and Direct Gauge Mediation

We construct supersymmetric gauge theories with new mechanisms of dynamical supersymmetry breaking. The models have flat directions at the classical level, and different mechanisms lift these flat directions in different regions of the classical moduli space. In one branch of the moduli space, supersymmetry is broken by confinement in a novel manner. The models contain only dimensionless couplings and have large groups of unbroken global symmetries, making them potentially interesting for model-building. As an illustrative application, we couple the standard model gauge group to a model with an SU(5) global symmetry, resulting in a model with composite messengers and a non-minimal spectrum of superpartner masses.Comment: 18 pages, LaTeX2e, no figures. Minor corrections; version to be published in Phys. Rev.