Vacuum Instability in Low-Energy Supersymmetry Breaking Models

Abstract

We show that for the simplest models of gauge mediated supersymmetry breaking, including all existing models, the true vacuum will not preserve QCD if it communicates supersymmetry breaking to the visible sector. We show that the desired supersymmetry breaking color preserving vacuum can nonetheless be stable cosmologically, but only if certain couplings are sufficiently small. We also present simple modifications to the sector which communicates supersymmetry breaking in which the true vacuum is acceptable, suggesting desirable properties to be sought in dynamical models of supersymmetry breaking.