Warping and Supersymmetry Breaking

TL;DR

<3-5 sentences high-level summary>This paper investigates supersymmetry breaking in a warped flux compactification, focusing on anti-self-dual flux in the deformed conifold and its dual antibrane realizations. It demonstrates that including the warp factor induces a new term in the moduli-space metric, scaling as $|S|^{-4/3}$ near the conifold point, which can substantially lower the SUSY-breaking scale in strongly warped throats. The work combines explicit supergravity computations on the warped deformed conifold with a discussion of gluing to a compact Calabi-Yau and implications for the dual gauge theory, highlighting both the potential for parametrically small breaking and several puzzles in gauge-theory interpretation. It suggests a mechanism by which warping mediates hierarchies in SUSY breaking, while also outlining important open questions about metastability, EFT validity, and the precise gauge-theory dual.

Abstract

We analyze supersymmetry breaking by anti-self-dual flux in the deformed conifold. This theory has been argued to be a dual realization of susy breaking by antibranes. As such, one might expect it to lead to a hierarchically small breaking scale, but only if the warp factor is taken into account. We verify this by explicitly computing the warp-modified moduli space metric. This leads to a new term, with a power-like divergence at the conifold point, which lowers the breaking scale. We finally point out various puzzles regarding the gauge theory interpretation of these results.

Figures (1)

• Figure 1: Behavior of the potential (\ref{['eq:V3']}) for the supersymmetric $N>0$ case, with (full line) and without (dashed line) warping effects. The point $S=1$ is the supersymmetric vacuum.