Cosmological Constant and Soft Terms in Supergravity

Abstract

Some of the soft SUSY breaking parameters in hidden sector supergravity model depend on the expectation value of the hidden sector scalar potential, $<V_h>$, whose tree level value is equal to the tree level cosmological constant. The current practice of calculating soft parameters assumes that $<V_h>=0$. Quantum correction to the cosmological constant can differ from the correction to $<V_h>$ by an amount of order $m^2_{3/2}M_{Pl}^2/8\pi$. This implies that, for the vanishing cosmological constant, the $<V_h>$--dependent parts of soft terms can be sizable, and hence the supergravity phenomenology should be accordingly modified.