"Soft" Phenomenology

Abstract

A review of the soft supersymmetry-breaking parameters and the $\mu$ term arising in superstring models is performed paying special attention to their phenomenological implications. In particular, the violation of the scalar mass universality which may lead to dangerous flavor changing neutral current phenomena and the existence of charge and color breaking minima are discussed. Finally, quadratically-divergent loop effects by pure supergravity interactions on soft parameters and the $\mu$ term are also reviewed and applied to superstring models. They provide several new sources of the $\mu$ term, naturally of order the weak scale, but also may lead to non--universal soft terms.