A Brand New Idea in Supersymmetry

[selfAdjoint]

Aaron Bergman has just called attention on science.strings to the new paper hep-th/0503249 which discusses the new idea of "split supersymetry".

From the abstract:

The possible existence of an exponentially large number of vacua in string theory behooves one to consider possibilities beyond our traditional notions of naturalness. Such an approach to electroweak physics was recently used in "Split Supersymmetry", a model which shares some successes and cures some ills of traditional weak-scale supersymmetry by raising the masses of scalar superpartners significantly above a TeV. Here we suggest an extension - we raise, in addition to the scalars, the gaugino and higgsino masses to much higher scales. In addition to maintaining many of the successes of Split Supersymmetry - electroweak precision, flavor-changing neutral currents and CP violation, dimension-4 and 5 proton decay - the model also allows for natural Planck-scale supersymmetry breaking, solves the gluino-decay problem, and resolves the coincidence problem with respect to gaugino and Higgs masses. The lack of unification of couplings suggests a natural solution to possible problems from dimension-6 proton decay. While this model has no weak-scale dark matter candidate, a Peccei-Quinn axion or small black holes can be consistently incorporated in this framework.

I don't know if this messes up current plans at Fermilab and CERN for hunting the Higgs. but it does look like it could give us a notably "nicer" replacement for the Standard Model. What would the MSSM look like in this version?

 

[PRodQuanta]

Wow, that's pretty impressive! Has there been any more clarification and/or research on this?

It's not everyday that someone comes up with a reasonable new framework.

Paden Roder

 

[selfAdjoint]

That is all I know, but here's some more from Aaron.

Split supersymmetry is the idea that we can have a supersymmetric model
where only the gauginos are light (TeV scale) and all the other
superpartners (maybe mod one or two I'm forgetting about) are up at the
GUT scale.

This avoids some of the usual problems with supersymmetric models that
have the superpartners at the weak scale because most (all?) of the
operators that you could write down that give rise to icky processes
like proton decay and FCNCs end up being suppressed due to the large
masses of the superpartners.

What the model keeps is the supersymmetric unification of the couplings
and a dark matter candidate, two of the 'successes' of supersymmetric
phenomenology.

The problem with the model is that it is highly fine tuned. There's no
reason at all given why the gauginos should be light. That's where the
philosophy and the morality come in.

Aaron

It's from sci.physics.strings, right up at the top of this forum.