Transmission of Supersymmetry Breaking from a 4-Dimensional Boundary

Abstract

In the strong-coupling limit of the heterotic string theory constructed by Horava and Witten, an 11-dimensional supergravity theory is coupled to matter multiplets confined to 10-dimensional mirror planes. This structure suggests that realistic unification models are obtained, after compactification of 6 dimensions, as theories of 5-dimensional supergravity in an interval, coupling to matter fields on 4-dimensional walls. Supersymmetry breaking may be communicated from one boundary to another by the 5-dimensional fields. In this paper, we study a toy model of this communication in which 5-dimensional super-Yang-Mills theory in the bulk couples to chiral multiplets on the walls. Using the auxiliary fields of the Yang-Mills multiplet, we find a simple algorithm for coupling the bulk and boundary fields. We demonstrate two different mechanisms for generating soft supersymmetry breaking terms in the boundary theory. We also compute the Casimir energy generated by supersymmetry breaking.