On supersymmetry breaking in string theory from gauge theory in a throat

Abstract

We embed the supersymmetry breaking mechanism in N=1 SQCD of hep-th/0602239 in a smooth superstring theory using D-branes in the background R^4 \times SL(2)_{k=1}/U(1) which smoothly captures the throat region of an intersecting NS5-brane configuration. A controllable deformation of the supersymmetric branes gives rise to the mass deformation of the magnetic SQCD theory on the branes. The consequent instability on the open string worldsheet can be followed onto a stable non-supersymmetric configuration of D-branes which realize the metastable vacuum configuration in the field theory. The new brane configuration is shown to backreact onto the background such as to produce different boundary conditions for the string fields in the radial direction compared to the supersymmetric configuration. In the string theory, this is interpreted to mean that the supersymmetry breaking is explicit rather than spontaneous.