Supersymmetry Breaking Vacua from M Theory Fivebranes

Abstract

We consider intersecting brane configurations realizing N=2 supersymmetric gauge theories broken to N=1 by multitrace superpotentials, and softly to N=0. We analyze, in the framework of M5-brane wrapping a curve, the supersymmetric vacua and the analogs of spontaneous supersymmetry breaking and soft supersymmetry breaking in gauge theories. We show that the M5-brane does not exhibit the analog of metastable spontaneous supersymmetry breaking, and does not have non-holomorphic minimal volume curves with holomorphic boundary conditions. However, we find that any point in the N=2 moduli space can be rotated to a non-holomorphic minimal volume curve, whose boundary conditions break supersymmetry. We interpret these as the analogs of soft supersymmetry breaking vacua in the gauge theory.