Spontaneous Supersymmetric Generation of an Indeterminate Mass Scale and a Possible Light Sterile Neutrino

Abstract

If a global continuous symmetry of a supersymmetric field theory is spontaneously broken while preserving the supersymmetry, the resulting theory has a massless superfield. One of its two bosonic degrees of freedom is the familiar phase rotation of the usual massless Nambu-Goldstone boson, but the other is a scale transformation. An indeterminate mass scale is thus generated. In the fermion sector, a seesaw texture appears which may be suitable for a possible light sterile neutrino. This feature persists even after the gauging of the continuous symmetry or the breaking of the supersymmetry to resolve the aforementioned mass-scale ambiguity.