Cosmological Constant and Fermi-Bose Degeneracy

Abstract

We study some cases in D=4 and in infinite-volume high dimensional theories when unbroken supersymmetry in the vacuum cannot guarantee Fermi-Bose degeneracy among excited states. In 4D we consider an example in which both supersymmetry and $R$ symmetry are unbroken in the vacuum, and the cosmological constant vanishes. However, theory admits solitons that do not allow existence of conserved supercharges. These objects are magnetically charged global monopoles which in some respect behave as point-like particles, but create a solid angle deficit which eliminates asymptotically covariantly constant spinors and lifts Fermi-Bose degeneracy of the spectrum. The idea is that in some "dual" description monopoles with global topological number and gauge magnetic charge may be replaced by electrically chaged particles with global Noether charges, e.g., such as baryon number. Alternatively theories with infinite volume extra dimensions may support unbroken bulk supersymmetry without Fermi-Bose degeneracy in the brane spectrum. We suggest a scenario in which brane is a source similar to a global monopole embedded in 3 infinite extra dimensions. Brane produces a deficit angle at infinity and may localize a meta-stable 4D graviton. Although bulk cosmological constant is zero, conserved supercharges can not be defined on such a background.