3,290 research outputs found
Vevacious: A Tool For Finding The Global Minima Of One-Loop Effective Potentials With Many Scalars
Several extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics contain
additional scalars implying a more complex scalar potential compared to that of
the Standard Model. In general these potentials allow for charge and/or color
breaking minima besides the desired one with correctly broken SU(2)_L times
U(1)_Y . Even if one assumes that a metastable local minimum is realized, one
has to ensure that its lifetime exceeds that of our universe. We introduce a
new program called Vevacious which takes a generic expression for a one-loop
effective potential energy function and finds all the tree-level extrema, which
are then used as the starting points for gradient-based minimization of the
one-loop effective potential. The tunneling time from a given input vacuum to
the deepest minimum, if different from the input vacuum, can be calculated. The
parameter points are given as files in the SLHA format (though is not
restricted to supersymmetric models), and new model files can be easily
generated automatically by the Mathematica package SARAH. This code uses
HOM4PS2 to find all the minima of the tree-level potential, PyMinuit to follow
gradients to the minima of the one-loop potential, and CosmoTransitions to
calculate tunneling times.Comment: 44 pages, 1 figure, manual for publicly available software, v2
corresponds to version accepted for publication in EPJC [clearer explanation
of scale dependence and region of validity, explicit mention that SLHA files
should have blocks matching those expected by model files, updated
references
Supersymmetric type-III seesaw: lepton flavour violating decays and dark matter
We study a supersymmetric version of the seesaw mechanism type-III. The model
consists of the MSSM particle content plus three copies of 24 superfields. The
fermionic part of the SU(2) triplet contained in the 24 is responsible for the
type-III seesaw, which is used to explain the observed neutrino masses and
mixings. Complete copies of 24 are introduced to maintain gauge coupling
unification. These additional states change the beta functions of the gauge
couplings above the seesaw scale. Using mSUGRA boundary conditions we calculate
the resulting supersymmetric mass spectra at the electro-weak scale using full
2-loop renormalization group equations. We show that the resulting spectrum can
be quite different compared to the usual mSUGRA spectrum. We discuss how this
might be used to obtain information on the seesaw scale from mass measurements.
Constraints on the model space due to limits on lepton flavour violating decays
are discussed. The main constraints come from the bounds on the decay mu to e
and gamma but there are also regions where the decay tau to mu and gamma gives
stronger constraints. We also calculate the regions allowed by the dark matter
constraint. For the sake of completeness, we compare our results with those for
the supersymmetric seesaw type-II and, to some extent, with type-I.Comment: 32 pages, 16 eps figures. One ref. added; small changes in tex
Constraining the Natural MSSM through tunneling to color-breaking vacua at zero and non-zero temperature
We re-evaluate the constraints on the parameter space of the minimal
supersymmetric standard model from tunneling to charge- and/or color-breaking
minima, taking into account thermal corrections. We pay particular attention to
the region known as the Natural MSSM, where the masses of the scalar partners
of the top quarks are within an order of magnitude or so of the electroweak
scale. These constraints arise from the interaction between these scalar tops
and the Higgs fields, which allows the possibility of parameter points having
deep charge- and color-breaking true vacua. In addition to requiring that our
electro-weak-symmetry-breaking, yet QCD- and electromagnetism-preserving vacuum
has a sufficiently long lifetime at zero temperature, also demanding stability
against thermal tunneling further restricts the allowed parameter space.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, software available from
http://vevacious.hepforge.org/ - version 2 matches that accepted for
publication in Phys. Lett.
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