Out Of This World Supersymmetry Breaking

Abstract

We show that in a general hidden sector model, supersymmetry breaking necessarily generates at one-loop a scalar and gaugino mass as a consequence of the super-Weyl anomaly. We study a scenario in which this contribution dominates. We consider the Standard Model particles to be localized on a (3+1)-dimensional subspace or ``3-brane'' of a higher dimensional spacetime, while supersymmetry breaking occurs off the 3-brane, either in the bulk or on another 3-brane. At least one extra dimension is assumed to be compactified roughly one to two orders of magnitude below the four-dimensional Planck scale. This framework is phenomenologically very attractive; it introduces new possibilities for solving the supersymmetric flavor problem, the gaugino mass problem, the supersymmetric CP problem, and the mu-problem. Furthermore, the compactification scale can be consistent with a unification of gauge and gravitational couplings. We demonstrate these claims in a four-dimensional effective theory below the compactification scale that incorporates the relevant features of the underlying higher dimensional theory and the contribution of the super-Weyl anomaly. Naturalness constraints follow not only from symmetries but also from the higher dimensional origins of the theory. We also introduce additional bulk contributions to the MSSM soft masses. This scenario is very predictive: the gaugino masses, squark masses, and $A$ terms are given in terms of MSSM renormalization group functions.