Spontaneous CP violation in supersymmetric models with four higgs doublets

Abstract

We consider supersymmetric extensions of the standard model with two pairs of Higgs doublets. We study the possibility that CP violation is generated spontaneously in the scalar sector via vacuum expectation values (VEVs) of the Higgs fields. Using a simple geometrical interpretation of the minimum conditions we prove that the minimum of the tree-level scalar potential for these models is allways real. We show that complex VEVs can appear once radiative corrections and/or explicit {\it soft} CP violating terms are added to the effective potential.