Search

It is well-known that the number of particles produced in cosmology, commonly defined in the literature from the Fock space of the instantaneous hamiltonian of the canonically normalized fields, is ambiguous. On the other hand, the energy computed from the energy-momentum tensor should be physical. We compare the corresponding Fock spaces and relate them through a Bogolyubov transformation. We find that for particles of spin $0$, $1$ and $3/2$ the two Fock spaces are different, whereas they are the same for spin $1/2$ fermions. For spin $0$ and $1$, for particles of high momenta the two Fock spaces align, as intuitively expected. For the spin $3/2$, one finds two puzzles. The first one is that the two corresponding Fock spaces do not match even in the limit of high momenta. The second is that whereas we provide evidence for the equivalence theorem between longitudinal gravitinos and the goldstino in terms of an exact matching between the lagrangians and the instantaneous hamiltonians for the canonically normalized fields, the energy operator computed from the Rarita--Schwinger action does not seem to be captured in a simple way by the goldstino action. Our results suggest a re-analysis of non-thermal gravitino production in cosmology., Comment: v2: minor modifications, accepted for publication in JHEP. 31 pages + 2 appendices

We explore possible extensions of the Weak Gravity Conjecture (WGC) to scalar field theories. To avoid charged black hole remnants, the WGC requires the existence of a particle with a mass $m < g q M_P$, with charge $q$ and U(1) gauge coupling $g$, allowing the decay to shed the black hole charge. Although there is no obvious problem that arises in the absence of a U(1) charge, it has been postulated that gravity must remain the weakest force even when extended to scalar interactions. Quantifying this conjecture may be done by comparing scalar and gravitational amplitudes, or as we advocate here by comparing scattering cross sections. In theories with non-trivial field space geometries, by working out examples with perturbation theory around arbitrary field values and performing tadpole resummations, we argue that the conjecture must be applied only at the extrema of the scalar potential (when expressed in locally canonical coordinates). We consider several toy models in the context of no-scale supergravity and also consider examples of inflationary models., Comment: 47 pages, 19 figures

Supergravity theories with non-minimal K\"ahler potentials are characterized by a non-trivial field space manifold with corresponding non-trivial kinetic terms. The scattering amplitudes in these theories can be calculated at fixed background field values by making a field redefinition to Riemann normal coordinates. Because of the K\"ahler structure of supergravity, a more compact method for calculating amplitudes is obtained by a redefinition to K\"ahler normal coordinates. We compare both methods and calculate the explicit transformations and amplitudes for several examples in the context of no-scale supergravity with one and two chiral superfields. We show that in all cases the equivalence of the scattering amplitudes using either Riemann normal or K\"ahler normal coordinates is possible only at extremal points of the scalar potential., Comment: 40 pages, 6 Figures

Anti-D3 branes at the bottom of warped throats, commonly used to uplift the cosmological constant in String-Theory de Sitter proposals, source a plaethora of supersymmetry-breaking fluxes, that can interact nontrivially with other ingredients of the flux compactification. In this paper we perform a complex-structure decomposition of these fluxes, and compute the effect of the (0,3) flux component on the stabilization of K\"ahler moduli via D7-branes gaugino condensation. This allows us to obtain a new constraint on the validity of this stabilization mechanism. This effect does not appear hard to satisfy in de Sitter construction proposals that use long warped throats, but may be problematic in proposals where the warping is small., Comment: 17 pages, LaTeX

It is well-known that gravitino propagation in standard supergravities is free of any causality problems. However, two issues related to gravitino propagation were recently uncovered in specific supergravities with nonlinear supersymmetry. One of them concerns potential acausality/superluminality, whereas the second one arises from the vanishing of the sound speed at specific points during inflation. The former is famously related to positivity constraints on specific EFT operators, derived from dispersion relations on the energy-growing part of scattering amplitudes, and indeed we show that subluminality constraints for the gravitino are related via the equivalence theorem to positivity bounds in low-energy goldstino actions. However, the former are stronger, in the sense that they apply to functions of the scalar fields not only in the ground state, but for any field values such as those scanned by time-dependent solutions, unlike bounds derived from $2\to 2$ scattering amplitudes in the vacuum. We also argue that nontrivial causality constraints arise only in the case where nonlinear supersymmetry in the matter sector is encoded into superfield constraints which do not seem to arise from microscopic two-derivative lagrangians, in particular for the orthogonal constraint used to build minimal models of inflation in supergravity. This allows us to propose simple alternatives which maintain the minimality of the spectra and are causal in all points of the theory parameter space. We also discuss minimal supergravity models of inflation along these lines., Comment: v3: 29 pages + two appendices, published version

We compute the supersymmetry-breaking three-form fluxes generated by the addition of anti-D3 branes at the tip of a Klebanov-Strassler throat. These fluxes give rise to nontrivial terms in the superpotential when the throat is embedded in a flux compactification. We describe these terms both from a ten-dimensional and from a four-dimensional perspective and show that, upon including K\"ahler-moduli stabilization, the resulting potential admits de Sitter minima. Our proposed de Sitter construction does not require additional supersymmetry-breaking (0,3) fluxes, and hence is more minimalist than the KKLT proposal., Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures

Starting from a peculiar orientifold projection proposed long ago by Angelantonj and Cardella, we elaborate on a novel perturbative scenario that involves only D-branes, together with the two types of orientifold planes ${\rm O}_{\pm}$ and anti-orientifold planes $\overline{{\rm O}}_{\pm}$. We elucidate the microscopic ingredients of such models, connecting them to a novel realization of brane supersymmetry breaking. Depending on the position of the D-branes in the internal space, supersymmetry can be broken at the string scale on branes, or alternatively only at the massive level. The main novelty of this construction is that it features no NS-NS disk tadpoles, while avoiding open-string instabilities. The one-loop potential, which depends on the positions of the D-branes, is minimized for maximally broken, nonlinearly realized supersymmetry. The orientifold projection and the effective field theory description reveal a soft breaking of supersymmetry in the closed-string sector. In such models it is possible to decouple the gravitino mass from the value of the scalar potential, while avoiding brane instabilities., Comment: 1+37 pages, 2 figures. References added

It has been argued that supergravity models of inflation with vanishing sound speeds, $c_s$, lead to an unbounded growth in the production rate of gravitinos. We consider several models of inflation to delineate the conditions for which $c_s = 0$. In models with unconstrained superfields, we argue that the mixing of the goldstino and inflatino in a time-varying background prevents the uncontrolled production of the longitudinal modes. This conclusion is unchanged if there is a nilpotent field associated with supersymmetry breaking with constraint ${\bf S^2} =0$, i.e. sgoldstino-less models. Models with a second orthogonal constraint, ${\bf S(\Phi-\bar{\Phi})} =0$, where $\bf{\Phi}$ is the inflaton superfield, which eliminates the inflatino, may suffer from the over-production of gravitinos. However, we point out that these models may be problematic if this constraint originates from a UV Lagrangian, as this may require using higher derivative operators. These models may also exhibit other pathologies such as $c_s > 1$, which are absent in theories with the single constraint or unconstrained fields., Comment: 12 pages

We consider a 5D extension of the DFSZ axion model that addresses both the axion quality and fermion mass hierarchy problems, and predicts flavour-dependent, off-diagonal axion-fermion couplings. The axion is part of a 5D complex scalar field charged under a U(1)$_{PQ}$ symmetry that is spontaneously broken in the bulk, and is insensitive to explicit PQ breaking on the UV boundary. Bulk Standard Model fermions interact with two Higgs doublets that can be localized on the UV boundary or propagate in the bulk to explain the fermion masses and mixings. When the Higgs doublets are localized on the UV boundary, they induce flavour diagonal couplings between the fermions and the axion. However, when the Higgs doublets propagate in the bulk, the overlap of the axion and fermion profiles generates flavour off-diagonal couplings. The effective scale of these off-diagonal couplings in both the quark and lepton sectors can be as small as $10^{11}$ GeV, and therefore will be probed in future precision flavour experiments., Comment: 40 pages, 13 figures

Intersecting D-brane models and their T-dual magnetic compactifications provide an attractive framework for particle physics, allowing for chiral fermions and supersymmetry breaking. Generically, magnetic compactifications have tachyons that are usually removed by Wilson lines. However, quantum corrections prevent local minima for Wilson lines. We therefore study tachyon condensation in the simplest case, the magnetic compactification of type I string theory on a torus to eight dimensions. We find that tachyon condensation restores supersymmetry, which is broken by the magnetic flux, and we compute the mass spectrum of vector- and hypermultiplets. The gauge group $\text{SO}(32)$ is broken to $\text{USp}(16)$. We give arguments that the vacuum reached by tachyon condensation corresponds to the unique 8d superstring theory already known in the literature, with discrete $B_{ab}$ background or, in the T-dual version, the type IIB orientifold with three $\text{O}7_-$-planes, one $\text{O}7_+$-plane and eight D7-branes coincident with the $\text{O}7_+$-plane. The ground state after tachyon condensation is supersymmetric and has no chiral fermions., Comment: 29 pages, 3 figures

Recently, Kim, Shiu and Vafa proposed general consistency conditions for six dimensional supergravity theories with minimal supersymmetry coming from couplings to strings. We test them in explicit perturbative orientifold models in order to unravel the microscopic origin of these constraints. Based on the perturbative data, we conjecture the existence of null charges $Q \cdot Q=0 $ for any six-dimensional theory with at least one tensor multiplet, coupling to string defects of charge $Q$. We then include the new constraint to exclude some six-dimensional supersymmetric anomaly-free examples that have currently no string or F-theory realization. We also investigate the constraints from the couplings to string defects in case where supersymmetry is broken in tachyon free vacua, containing non-BPS configurations of brane supersymmetry breaking type, where the breaking is localized on antibranes. In this case, some conditions have naturally to be changed or relaxed whenever the string defects experience supersymmetry breaking, whereas the constraints are still valid if they are geometrically separated from the supersymmetry breaking source., Comment: 49 pages. Minor corrections/improvements, one reference added in v2

We study the weak gravity conjecture in non-supersymmetric string theory setups. Precisely, those are type I string theory with supersymmetry broken \`a la Scherk-Schwarz and open strings on D branes wrapped around magnetized tori in type II string theory. We compute long-range interactions between identical branes at one-loop and compare them to the weak gravity conjecture for higher-degree forms. In our examples, SUSY breaking generates interactions between branes, which are not anymore BPS, in such a way that the weak gravity conjecture is verified. In type I with the Scherk-Schwarz mechanism, the tension of the branes is reduced by one-loop quantum effects, so that there are long-range repulsive forces. The correlation of the non-vanishing brane potential with the presence of a running modulus and of possible D branes bound states nicely connects to other swampland conjectures. For magnetized branes in type II strings, we check that non-BPS branes experience a long-range repulsion whenever the open string spectrum is tachyon-free. Ultimately, the role of stringy objects in the discussion makes it compelling to further understand swampland conjectures in strings with broken SUSY, let alone their phenomenological relevance., Comment: Contribution to the proceedings for Corfu Summer Institute 2019 "School and Workshops on Elementary Particle Physics and Gravity" (CORFU2019) 31 August - 25 September 2019 Corfu, Greece

We propose a model where a long-lived pseudoscalar EeV particle can be produced with sufficient abundance so as to account for the cold dark matter density, despite having a Planck mass suppressed coupling to the thermal bath. Connecting this state to a hidden sterile neutrino sector through derivative couplings, induced by higher dimensional operators, allows one to account for light neutrino masses while having a lifetime that can be much larger than the age of the Universe. Moreover, the same derivative coupling accounts for the production of dark matter in the very first instant of the reheating. Given the sensitivity of the IceCube and ANITA collaborations, we study the possible signatures of such a model in the form of Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays in the neutrino sector, and show that such signals could be detected in the near future., Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures. Typo corrected

We consider an explicit effective field theory example based on the Bousso-Polchinski framework with a large number N of hidden sectors contributing to supersymmetry breaking. Each contribution comes from four form quantized fluxes, multiplied by random couplings. The soft terms in the observable sector in this case become random variables, with mean values and standard deviations which are computable. We show that this setup naturally leads to a solution of the flavor problem in low-energy supersymmetry if N is sufficiently large. We investigate the consequences for flavor violating processes at low-energy and for dark matter., Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures

It was recently shown that in warped compactifications based on a Klebanov-Strassler throat there is a light complex structure field, governing the size of the throat and the redshift at its tip. We show that after uplift of the cosmological constant by an anti-D3 brane at the tip of the throat, the contribution to supersymmetry breaking coming from the new light field is large. We work out the mass scales, in particular the condition for this field to be heavier than the K\"ahler modulus. We check that for the range of parameters relevant for the destabilization we find agreement with de Sitter swampland conjecture. Adding matter fields on distant branes, we discuss the effects on supersymmetry breaking in the observable sector. A hierarchically small scale of supersymmetry breaking translates generically into large values of localized D3 charges in the manifold., Comment: 27 pages; v2: references added, minor corrections; v3: extended discussion, version to appear in JHEP; v4: corrected funding information

Intersecting D-brane models and their T-dual magnetic compactifications yield attractive models of particle physics where magnetic flux plays a twofold role, being the source of fermion chirality as well as supersymmetry breaking. A potential problem of these models is the appearance of tachyons which can only be avoided in certain regions of moduli space and in the presence of Wilson lines. We study the effective four-dimensional field theory for an orientifold compactification of type IIA string theory and the corresponding toroidal compactification of type I string theory. After determining the Kaluza-Klein and Landau-level towers of massive states in different sectors of the model, we evaluate their contributions to the one-loop effective potential, summing over all massive states, and we relate the result to the corresponding string partition functions. We find that the Wilson-line effective potential has only saddle points, and the theory is therefore driven to the tachyonic regime. There tachyon condensation takes place and chiral fermions acquire a mass of the order of the compactification scale. We also find evidence for a tachyonic behaviour of the volume moduli. More work on tachyon condensation is needed to clarify the connection between supersymmetry breaking, a chiral fermion spectrum and vacuum stability., Comment: 49 pages, 5 figures; published version

We revisit the limits on $R$-parity violation in the minimal supersymmetric standard model. In particular, we focus on the high-scale supersymmetry scenario in which all the sparticles are in excess of the inflationary scale of approximately $10^{13}$ GeV, and thus no sparticles ever come into thermal equilibrium. In this case the cosmological limits, stemming from the preservation of the baryon asymmetry that have been previously applied for weak scale supersymmetry, are now relaxed. We argue that even when sparticles are never in equilibrium, $R$-parity violation is still constrained via higher dimensional operators by neutrino and nucleon experiments and/or insisting on the preservation of a non-zero $B-L$ asymmetry., Comment: 29 pages

We construct type I string models with supersymmetry broken by compactification that are non-tachyonic and have exponentially small effective potential at one-loop. All open string moduli can be stabilized, while the closed string moduli remain massless at one-loop. The backgrounds of interest have rigid Wilson lines by the use of stacked branes, and some models should have heterotic duals. We also present non-tachyonic backgrounds with positive potentials of runaway type at one-loop. This class of models could be used to test various swampland conjectures., Comment: 1+53 pages, 2 figures, 2 tables

We use type I string models with supersymmetry broken by compactification (\`a la Scherk-Schwarz) in order to test the weak gravity conjecture in the presence of runaway potentials in a perturbative string theory setting. For a finite value of the supersymmetry breaking radius there is a runaway potential, which is the only possibility if one accepts the non-existence of de Sitter vacua. Although the weak gravity conjecture is valid in the decompactification limit, for fixed values of the radius we show that there are short-ranged attractive D1 brane-brane interactions. We argue however that at one-loop level the effective tension of the branes decreases and becomes smaller than the effective charge such that there is a long-ranged repulsive force and the weak gravity conjecture is respected. Moreover, for very small $g_s$ we expect a large number of stable bound states to be present., Comment: v4: corrected funding information

We show that moduli fields as mediators between the Standard Model and the dark sector can naturally lead to the observed relic abundance. Indeed, even if moduli are very massive, the nature of their couplings with matter and gauge fields allows producing a sufficiently large amount of dark matter in the early Universe through the freeze-in mechanism. Moreover, the complex nature of the moduli fields whose real and imaginary part couple differently to the thermal bath gives an interesting and unusual phenomenology compared to other freeze-in models of that type., Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures; typos fixed, references added

Inspired by recent studies of high-scale decay constant or flavorful QCD axions, we review and clarify their existence in effective string models with anomalous $U(1)$ gauge groups. We find that such models, when coupled to charged scalars getting vacuum expectation values, always have one light axion, whose mass can only come from nonperturbative effects. If the main nonperturbative effect is from QCD, then it becomes a Peccei-Quinn axion candidate for solving the strong CP problem. We then study simple models with universal Green-Schwarz mechanism and only one charged scalar field: in the minimal gaugino condensation case the axion mass is tied to the supersymmetry breaking scale and cannot be light enough, but slightly refined models maintain a massless axion all the way down to the QCD scale. Both kinds of models can be extended to yield intermediate scale axion decay constants. Finally, we gauge flavorful axion models under an anomalous $U(1)$ and discuss the axion couplings which arise., Comment: 18 pages

We find a mechanism by which antibranes placed in a warped deformed conifold throat can destroy the stabilization of the size of the sphere at the tip, collapsing it to zero size. This conifold destabilization mechanism can be avoided by turning on a large amount of flux on the sphere, but tadpole cancelation makes this incompatible with a hierarchy of scales in a Type IIB flux compactification. This indicates that antibrane uplift cannot be used to construct stable de Sitter vacua with a small cosmological constant in perturbative String Theory. The values of V and V' for these KKLT-like scenarios can be parametrically small, but we find that V'/V is still consistent with the de Sitter swampland conjecture. Our results also suggest that there should exist a Klebanov-Strassler black hole, holographically dual to a deconfined phase with spontaneously broken chiral symmetry., Comment: 24 pages, 3 figures; v4: corrected factors of g_s and pi, removed the first appendix

We consider the effects of R-parity violation due to the inclusion of a bilinear $\mu^\prime L H_u$ superpotential term in high scale supersymmetric models with an EeV scale gravitino as dark matter. Although the typical phenomenological limits on this coupling (e.g. due to lepton number violation and the preservation of the baryon asymmetry) are relaxed when the supersymmetric mass spectrum is assumed to be heavy (in excess of the inflationary scale of $3 \times 10^{13}$ GeV), the requirement that the gravitino be sufficiently long-lived so as to account for the observed dark matter density, leads to a relatively strong bound on $\mu^\prime \lesssim 20$ GeV. The dominant decay channels for the longitudinal component of the gravitino are $Z \nu, W^\pm l^\mp$, and $h\nu$. To avoid an excess neutrino signal in IceCube, our limit on $\mu'$ is then strengthened to $\mu' \lesssim 50$ keV. When the bound is saturated, we find that there is a potentially detectable flux of mono-chromatic neutrinos with EeV energies., Comment: 27 pages, 4 figures

Free massless scalars have a shift symmetry. This is usually broken by gauge and Yukawa interactions, such that quantum corrections induce a quadratically divergent mass term. In the Standard Model this leads to the hierarchy problem of the electroweak theory, the question why the Higgs mass is so much smaller than the Planck mass. We present an example where a large scalar mass term is avoided by coupling the scalar to an infinite tower of massive states which are obtained from a six-dimensional theory compactified on a torus with magnetic flux. The series of divergent quantum corrections adds up to zero, and we show explicitly that the shift symmetry of the scalar is preserved in the effective four-dimensional theory despite the presence of gauge and Yukawa interaction terms., Comment: 20 pages, 2 figures; some clarifications in abstract and outlook

We study QCD axion or cosmological axion-like particles (ALPs) in a model inspired by the recent interest in 4-dimensional clockwork models, with the global symmetry being accidentally enforced by a gauge abelian quiver with scalar bifundamental fields. For the QCD axion, we analyze the connection between the degree of protection of the axion mass against gravitational corrections, the explanation of the hierarchy $f_a \ll M_P$ and the number of colored fermions needed to generate anomalous couplings to gluons, all linked together by the underlying gauge symmetries. Based on that model and on the comparison with earlier models in the literature, we derive certain general conclusions on QCD axion models that use accidental global symmetries. For the ALPs, assuming that their mass is solely given by gravitational corrections, we identify the parameter space where the decay constant and the mass are consistent with the DM abundance, and we show that this clockwork-inspired model is a particularly economical model for a very light ALP DM candidate., Comment: Version accepted in EPJC. Discussion extended in the introduction and in section 3.2. 13 pages + appendices, 7 Figures

We consider inflation and supersymmetry breaking in the context of a minimal model of supersymmetry in which the only "low" energy remnant of supersymmetry is the gravitino with a mass of order an EeV. In this theory, the supersymmetry breaking scale is above the inflaton mass, m ~ 3 x 10^{13} GeV, as are all sfermion and gaugino masses. In particular, for a no-scale formulation of Starobinsky-like inflation using the volume modulus T, we show that inflation can be accommodated even when the supersymmetry breaking scale is very large. Reheating is driven through a gravitational coupling to the two Higgs doublets and is enhanced by the large mu-parameter. This leads to gravitino cold dark matter where the mass is constrained to be in the range 0.1 EeV $\lesssim m_{3/2} \lesssim 1000$ EeV., Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures

We analyse open strings with background electric fields in the internal space, T-dual to branes moving with constant velocities in the internal space. We find that the direction of the electric fields inside a two torus, dual to the D brane velocities, has to be quantised such that the corresponding direction is compact. This implies that D-brane motion in the internal torus is periodic, with a periodicity that can be parametrically large in terms of the internal radii. By S-duality, this is mapped into an internal magnetic field in a three torus, a quantum mechanical analysis of which yields a similar result, i.e. the parallel direction to the magnetic field has to be compact. Furthermore, for the magnetic case, we find the Landau level degeneracy as being given by the greatest common divisor of the flux numbers. We carry on the string quantisation and derive the relevant partition functions for these models. Our analysis includes also the case of oblique electric fields which can arise when several stacks of branes are present. Compact dimensions and/or oblique sectors influence the energy loss of the system through pair-creation and thus can be relevant for inflationary scenarios with branes. Finally, we show that the compact energy loss is always larger than the non-compact one., Comment: 44 pages, 4 figures; v2 corrections in section 8, one reference added

We consider the possibility that supersymmetry is broken above the inflationary mass scale and that the only "low" energy remnant of supersymmetry is the gravitino with mass of order the EeV scale. The gravitino in this class of models becomes a candidate for the dark matter of the Universe. To avoid the over-production of gravitinos from the decays of the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle we argue that the supersymmetric spectrum must lie above the inflationary mass scale ($M_{\rm SUSY} > 10^{-5} M_{\rm P} \sim 10^{13}$ GeV). Since $m_{3/2} \simeq M_{\rm SUSY}^2/M_{\rm P}$, we expect $m_{3/2} \gtrsim 0.2$ EeV. Cosmological constraints then predict a relatively large reheating temperature between $10^{10}$ and $10^{12}$ GeV., Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure. Dedicated to the memory of Pierre Binetruy

Motivated by the absence of signals of new physics in both searches for new particles at LHC and for a Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) dark matter candidate, we consider a scenario where supersymmetry is broken at a scale above the reheating temperature. The low energy particle content consists then only in Standard Model states and a gravitino. We investigate the possibility that the latter provides the main component of dark matter through a freeze in mechanism from annihilation of thermalized Standard Model particles. We focus on the case where its production through scattering in the thermal plasma is well approximated by the non-linear supersymmetric effective Lagrangian of the associated goldstino and identify the parameter space allowed by the cosmological constraints, allowing the possibility of large reheating temperature compatible with leptogenesis scenarios, alleviating the so called "gravitino problem"., Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, published version (references added)

Magnetic flux plays an important role in compactifications of field and string theories in two ways, it generates a multiplicity of chiral fermion zero modes and it can break supersymmetry. We derive the complete four-dimensional effective action for N=1 supersymmetric Abelian and non-Abelian gauge theories in six dimensions compactified on a torus with flux. The effective action contains the tower of charged states and it accounts for the mass spectrum of bosonic and fermionic fields as well as their level-dependent interactions. This allows us to compute quantum corrections to the mass and couplings of Wilson lines. We find that the one-loop corrections vanish, contrary to the case without flux. This can be traced back to the spontaneous breaking of a symmetry of the six-dimensional theory by the background gauge field, with the Wilson line as Goldstone boson., Comment: 34 pages, 6 figures; published version

We study the embedding of inflation with nilpotent multiplets in supergravity, in particular the decoupling of the sgoldstino scalar field. Instead of being imposed by hand, the nilpotency constraint on the goldstino multiplet arises in the low energy-effective theory by integrating out heavy degrees of freedom. We present explicit supergravity models in which a large but finite sgoldstino mass arises from Yukawa or gauge interactions. In both cases the inflaton potential receives two types of corrections. One is from the backreaction of the sgoldstino, the other from the heavy fields generating its mass. We show that these scale oppositely with the Volkov-Akulov cut-off scale, which makes a consistent decoupling of the sgoldstino nontrivial. Still, we identify a parameter window in which sgoldstino-less inflation can take place, up to corrections which flatten the inflaton potential., Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure. Comments added, published version

We review the effects of heavy scalar fields during inflation in the framework of $\mathcal N = 1$ supergravity. Such heavy scalars can be geometric moduli from string compactifications or stabilizer fields from a different sector of the theory. Even when these fields are heavier than the Hubble scale during inflation, they generically cause backreactions which alter the dynamics of the system. Severe problems may arise when the heavy fields break supersymmetry, which is quite generic for K\"ahler moduli. We illustrate these effects in two examples, chaotic inflation and Starobinsky-like inflation. In chaotic inflation the backreaction of heavy K\"ahler moduli causes a flattening of the quadratic potential. In many setups of Starobinsky-like inflation, however, backreactions spoil the flatness of the plateau., Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures. Contribution to the proceedings of the 18th International Conference `From the Planck Scale to the Electroweak Scale', 25-29 May 2015, Ioannina, Greece

We emphasize the importance of effects from heavy fields on supergravity models of inflation. We study, in particular, the backreaction of stabilizer fields and geometric moduli in the presence of supersymmetry breaking. Many effects do not decouple even if those fields are much heavier than the inflaton field. We apply our results to successful models of Starobinsky-like inflation and natural inflation. In most scenarios producing a plateau potential it proves difficult to retain the flatness of the potential after backreactions are taken into account. Some of them are incompatible with non-perturbative moduli stabilization. In natural inflation there exist a number of models which are not constrained by backreactions at all. In those cases the correction terms from heavy fields have the same inflaton-dependence as the uncorrected potential, so that inflation may be possible even for very large gravitino masses., Comment: 29 pages, 1 figure, comments added, subsection 2.3 added, published version

We analyze the interplay between K\"ahler moduli stabilization and chaotic inflation in supergravity. While heavy moduli decouple from inflation in the supersymmetric limit, supersymmetry breaking generically introduces non-decoupling effects. These lead to inflation driven by a soft mass term, $m_\varphi^2 \sim m m_{3/2}$, where $m$ is a supersymmetric mass parameter. This scenario needs no stabilizer field, but the stability of moduli during inflation imposes a large supersymmetry breaking scale, $m_{3/2} \gg H$, and a careful choice of initial conditions. This is illustrated in three prominent examples of moduli stabilization: KKLT stabilization, K\"ahler Uplifting, and the Large Volume Scenario. Remarkably, all models have a universal effective inflaton potential which is flattened compared to quadratic inflation. Hence, they share universal predictions for the CMB observables, in particular a lower bound on the tensor-to-scalar ratio, $r \gtrsim 0.05$., Comment: 44+1 pages, 6 figures, minor modifications, references added

We study a minimal extension of the Standard Model where a scalar field is coupled to the right handed neutrino responsible for the see-saw mechanism for neutrino masses. In the absence of other couplings, below 8 TeV the scalar $A$ has a unique decay mode $A \rightarrow \nu \nu$, $\nu$ being the physical observed light neutrino state. Above 8 (11) TeV, the 3-body (4-body) decay modes dominate. Imposing constraints on neutrino masses $m_\nu$ from atmospheric and solar experiments implies a long lifetime for $A$, much larger than the age of the Universe, making it a natural dark matter candidate. Its lifetime can be as large as $10^{29}$ seconds, and its signature below 8 TeV would be a clear monochromatic neutrino signal, which can be observed by ANTARES or IceCube. Under certain conditions, the scalar $A$ may be viewed as a Goldstone mode of a complex scalar field whose vacuum expectation value generates the Majorana mass for $\nu_R$. In this case, we expect the dark matter scalar to have a mass $\lesssim 10$ GeV., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, version accepted for publication in PRD [references and 3/4- body decay added in the analysis for completeness]

Most successful models of inflation in supergravity have a shift symmetry for the inflaton and contain a stabilizer field coupled to the inflaton in a particular way. We argue that the natural interpretation of the stabilizer, from the viewpoint of the shift symmetry, is a three-form multiplet. Its coupling to the inflaton is uniquely determined by the shift symmetry and the invariance under three-form gauge transformations and has a natural string theory interpretation., Comment: 15 pages, references added

Large-field inflation is an interesting and predictive scenario. Its non-trivial embedding in supergravity was intensively studied in the recent literature, whereas its interplay with supersymmetry breaking has been less thoroughly investigated. We consider the minimal viable model of chaotic inflation in supergravity containing a stabilizer field, and add a Polonyi field. Furthermore, we study two possible extensions of the minimal setup. We show that there are various constraints: first of all, it is very hard to couple an O'Raifeartaigh sector with the inflaton sector, the simplest viable option being to couple them only through gravity. Second, even in the simplest model the gravitino mass is bounded from above parametrically by the inflaton mass. Therefore, high-scale supersymmetry breaking is hard to implement in a chaotic inflation setup. As a separate comment we analyze the simplest chaotic inflation construction without a stabilizer field, together with a supersymmetrically stabilized Kahler modulus. Without a modulus, the potential of such a model is unbounded from below. We show that a heavy modulus cannot solve this problem., Comment: 19 pages, 3 figures, comments and references added

We propose different scenarios where a keV dark matter annihilates to produce a monochromatic signal. The process is generated through the exchange of a light scalar of mass of order 300 keV - 50 MeV coupling to photon through loops or higher dimensional operators. For natural values of the couplings and scales, the model can generate a gamma-ray line which can fit with the recently identified 3.5 keV X-ray line., Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures

In the context of supersymmetric models where the gauginos may have both Majorana and Dirac masses we investigate the general constraints from flavour-changing processes on the scalar mass matrices. One finds that the chirality-flip suppression of flavour-changing effects usually invoked in the pure Dirac case holds in the mass insertion approximation but not in the general case, and fails in particular for inverted hierarchy models. We quantify the constraints in several flavour models which correlate fermion and scalar superpartner masses. We also discuss the limit of very large Majorana gaugino masses compared to the chiral adjoint and Dirac masses, where the remaining light eigenstate is the "fake" gaugino, including the consequences of suppressed couplings to quarks beyond flavour constraints., Comment: 63 pages, 6 figures, 9 tables. V3: matches published version

We consider the possibility that supersymmetry is broken at a low scale, within one order of magnitude above the TeV scale. In such a case, the degrees of freedom associated with the spontaneous breaking of supersymmetry, the goldstino fermion and its scalar superpartner (the sgoldstino), can have significant interactions with the Standard Model particles and their superpartners. We discuss some characteristic processes, involving the goldstino and the sgoldstino, and the collider signatures they give rise to. These signatures involve scalar resonances in the di-photon, di-jet, di-boson and di-tau channels, the possible relation between these resonances and deviations in the Higgs couplings as well as exotic Higgs decays in the monophoton+MET and the four photon channels., Comment: 5 pages, contribution to the Snowmass 2013

With the aim of linking natural supersymmetry to flavour physics, a model is proposed based on a family symmetry G \times U(1), where G is a discrete nonabelian subgroup of SU(2), with both F-term and (abelian) D-term supersymmetry breaking. A good fit to the fermion masses and mixing is obtained with the same U(1) charges for the left- and right- handed quarks of the first two families and the right-handed bottom quark, and with zero charge for the left-handed top-bottom doublet and the the right handed top. The model shows an interesting indirect correlation between the correct prediction for the V_{ub}/V_{cb} ratio and large right-handed rotations in the (s,b) sector, required to diagonalise the Yukawa matrix. For the squarks, one obtains almost degenerate first two generations. The main source of the FCNC and CP violation effects is the splitting between the first two families and the right-handed sbottom determined by the relative size of F-term and D-term supersymmetry breaking. The presence of the large right-handed rotation implies that the bounds on the masses of the first two families of squarks and the right handed sbottom are in a few to a few tens TeV range. The picture that emerges is light stops and left handed sbottom and much heavier other squarks., Comment: 29 pages, v2: Discussion on mu->e gamma modified, added some clarifications and references; published version

A general analysis is performed on the dimension-six operators mixing an almost hidden Z' to the Standard Model (SM), when the Z' communicates with the SM via heavy mediators. These are fermions charged under both Z' and the SM, while all SM fermions are neutral under Z'. We classify the operators as a function of the gauge anomalies behaviour of mediators and explicitly compute the dimension-six operators coupling Z' to gluons, generated at one-loop by chiral but anomaly-free, sets of fermion mediators. We prove that only one operator contribute to the couplings between Z' charged matter and on-shell gluons. We then make a complete phenomenological analysis of the scenario where the lightest fermion charged under Z' is the dark matter candidate. Combining results from WMAP/PLANCK data, mono-jet searches at LHC, and direct/indirect dark matter detections restrict considerably the allowed parameter space., Comment: 40 pages, 11 figures

The recent discovery of the Standard Model boson (SMS) and direct searches place new constraints and a new perspective on New Physics models. I mostly review supersymmetric model building, with special emphasizes on predictions of flavor models on superpartner spectra and inverted hierarchy models, mini-split models, very low-scale supersymmetry breaking predictions and some string theory inspired low-energy spectra., Comment: 9 pages, talk presented at Rencontres de Moriond EW2013, La Thuile, march 2-9 2013, Conference C13-03-02

We elaborate on a recently discovered phenomenon where a scalar field close to big-bang is forced to climb a steep potential by its dynamics. We analyze the phenomenon in more general terms by writing the leading order equations of motion near the singularity. We formulate the conditions for climbing to exist in the case of several scalars and after inclusion of higher-derivative corrections and we apply our results to some models of moduli stabilization. We analyze an example with steep stabilizing potential and notice again a related critical behavior: for a potential steepness above a critical value, going backwards towards big-bang, the scalar undergoes wilder oscillations, with the steep potential pushing it back at every passage and not allowing the scalar to escape to infinity. Whereas it was pointed out earlier that there are possible implications of the climbing phase to CMB, we point out here another potential application, to the issue of initial conditions in inflation., Comment: 49 pages, 2 figures, v2 refs added

We study the most general extension of the MSSM Lagrangian that includes scenarios in which supersymmetry is spontaneously broken at a low scale f. The spurion that parametrizes supersymmetry breaking in the MSSM is promoted to a dynamical superfield involving the goldstino, with (and without) its scalar superpartner, the sgoldstino. The low energy effective Lagrangian is written as an expansion in terms of m_{SUSY}/sqrt{f}, where m_{SUSY} is the induced supersymmetry breaking scale, and contains, in addition to the usual MSSM Lagrangian with the soft terms, couplings involving the component fields of the goldstino superfield and the MSSM fields. This Lagrangian can provide significant corrections to the usual couplings in the Standard Model and the MSSM. We study how these new corrections affect the Higgs couplings to gauge bosons and fermions, and how LHC bounds can be used in order to constrain f. We also discuss that, from the effective field theory point of view, the couplings of the goldstino interactions are not determined by any symmetry, and their usual simple relation to the soft terms is corrected by higher-dimensional operators., Comment: 46 pages, 3 figures