Twisted Moduli and Supersymmetry Breaking

Abstract

We consider twisted moduli contributions to supersymmetry breaking in effective type I string constructions involving intersecting D5_i and D9-branes using Goldstino angles to parametrise the supersymmetry breaking. It is well known that twisted moduli enter at tree-level into the gauge kinetic functions, and can provide new sources of gaugino mass if they develop F-term vacuum expectation values. It is generally assumed that string states which are sequestered from the twisted moduli receive a zero soft mass in the twisted modulus domination limit, however the standard form of Kahler potential does not reproduce this expectation. We therefore propose a new form of the Kahler potential which is consistent at leading order with the sequestered form proposed by Randall and Sundrum, and show that it leads to exponentially suppressed sequestered soft masses. Including the effects of Green-Schwarz mixing, we write down the soft scalar masses and trilinears arising from a type I string construction involving intersecting D5_i and D9-branes in the presence of untwisted and twisted moduli. If the squarks and sleptons are identified with sequestered states then in the twisted moduli dominated limit this corresponds to gaugino mediated supersymmetry breaking, and we discuss two different scenarios for this. The general results will be useful for phenomenological studies involving a combination of gravity and gaugino mediated SUSY breaking due to the dilaton, untwisted and twisted moduli contributions, and enable the soft masses to be studied as a function of the different compactification radii.