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# Steep inflation: ending braneworld inflation by gravitational particle production

## I Introduction

The realization  that we may live on a so-called brane embedded in a higher-dimensional Universe has significant implications for cosmology. One such is that the Friedmann equation is modified at very high energies , acquiring a term quadratic in the density. Such a term generally makes it easier to obtain inflation in the early Universe, by contributing extra friction to the scalar field equation of motion .

In this Letter we propose to capitalize on this feature by considering potentials which are normally too steep to support inflation. As we will see, this allows a particularly natural implementation of an unusual model for reheating at the end of inflation. In the conventional inflationary scenario, reheating is achieved by decay of the inflaton field into normal matter, either via parametric resonance or by single particle decays. However, there are at least two other mechanisms which have been proposed in the literature. One is reheating via the production of primordial black holes , whose subsequent Hawking evaporation produces the conventional matter — we do not discuss this possibility further. The second, which we exploit here, is that particles arise from gravitational particle production, with the inflaton energy density subsequently redshifting sufficiently quickly that this produced radiation comes to dominate. This scenario was first discussed by Ford  (see also Ref. ) and refined by Spokoiny ; recent applications include baryogenesis , scaling solutions in the present Universe , and the ‘quintessential inflation’ scenario of Peebles and Vilenkin .

In conventional inflationary models, the gravitational production scenario is difficult to arrange. In order to redshift the inflaton density more quickly than that of the produced particles one needs a sharp feature in the potential, so that it becomes steep enough that the inflaton becomes kinetic energy dominated, leading to $`\rho _\varphi 1/a^6`$. The gravitational particle production scenario arises much more naturally in the context of inflation on the brane. When one considers a potential which would ordinarily be too steep to support inflation, the transition to a kinetic energy dominated regime occurs naturally once the energy density falls sufficiently for the quadratic term to begin to lose its dominance. Thus there is no need for a feature in the inflaton potential.

Although our scenario could be implemented for a wide range of inflaton potentials, for simplicity we focus our discussion on the well-studied exponential potentials

$$V(\varphi )=V_0\mathrm{exp}\left(\sqrt{8\pi }\alpha \frac{\varphi }{M_4}\right),$$
(1)
where $`M_4`$ is the four-dimensional Planck mass and $`\alpha `$ is a constant. In the standard cosmology, the potential is shallow enough to support inflation only if $`\alpha ^2<2`$.

We consider the five-dimensional brane scenario, in which the Friedmann equation is modified from its usual form, becoming

$$H^2=\frac{8\pi }{3M_4^2}\rho \left[1+\frac{\rho }{2\lambda }\right]+\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }_4}{3}+\frac{}{a^4},$$
(2)
where $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_4`$ is the four-dimensional cosmological constant and the final term represents the influence of bulk gravitons on the brane. The brane tension $`\lambda `$ relates the four and five-dimensional Planck masses via

$$M_4=\sqrt{\frac{3}{4\pi }}\left(\frac{M_5^2}{\sqrt{\lambda }}\right)M_5,$$
(3)
and is constrained by the requirement of successful nucleosynthesis as $`\lambda >(1\mathrm{MeV})^4`$. We assume that the four-dimensional cosmological constant is set to zero by some (as yet undiscovered) mechanism, and once inflation begins the final term will rapidly become unimportant, leaving us with

$$H^2=\frac{8\pi }{3M_4^2}\rho \left[1+\frac{\rho }{2\lambda }\right].$$
(4)
We assume that the scalar field is confined to the brane, so that its field equation has the standard form

$$\ddot{\varphi }+3H\dot{\varphi }=\frac{dV}{d\varphi }.$$
(5)
## II Constraints

We analyze our model following closely the formalism of Maartens et al. . As we will see later, suitable values of $`\alpha `$ will be greater than about five; such potentials would not give inflation in the conventional cosmology.

### A Inflationary dynamics

Following Maartens et al. , we define a slow-roll parameter $`ϵ`$, generalizing the usual ones , by

$$ϵ\frac{\dot{H}}{H^2}\frac{M_4^2}{4\pi }\left(\frac{V^{}}{V}\right)^2\frac{1+V/\lambda }{\left(2+V/\lambda \right)^2},$$
(6)
where prime indicates a $`\varphi `$-derivative and the slow-roll approximation has been employed. Inflation takes place whenever $`ϵ<1`$. For our model we can always take $`V\lambda `$ during inflation, so

$$ϵ\frac{2\alpha ^2\lambda }{V}.$$
(7)
The end of inflation will take place when $`ϵ=1`$, giving

$$V_{\mathrm{end}}2\alpha ^2\lambda .$$
(8)
Notice that even at the end of inflation, typically the term quadratic in the density still dominates the linear term by a significant factor.

The amount of inflation that takes place is given by the number of $`e`$-foldings

$$N\frac{8\pi }{M_4^2}_\varphi ^{\varphi _{\mathrm{end}}}\frac{V}{V^{}}\left(1+\frac{V}{2\lambda }\right)𝑑\varphi .$$
(9)
As $`V\lambda `$ during inflation, this simply becomes

$$N\frac{1}{2\lambda \alpha ^2}\left(V_NV_{\mathrm{end}}\right),$$
(10)
and so the potential $`V_N`$ a given number of $`e`$-foldings from the end of inflation is given by

$$V_N=V_{\mathrm{end}}\left(N+1\right).$$
(11)
### B Perturbations and the COBE normalization

The amplitude of density perturbations is given by

$$A_\mathrm{S}^2\frac{512\pi }{75M_4^6}\frac{V^3}{V^2}\left(1+\frac{V}{2\lambda }\right)^3\frac{8}{75}\frac{V^4}{M_4^4\alpha ^2\lambda ^3}.$$
(12)
The observed value from COBE is $`A_\mathrm{S}=2\times 10^5`$ , which we apply 50 $`e`$-foldings from the end of inflation; using Eqs. (8) and (11) we obtain the simple result

$$V_{\mathrm{end}}^{1/4}=\frac{9\times 10^5}{\alpha }M_4=\frac{1\times 10^{15}\mathrm{GeV}}{\alpha }.$$
(13)
Equivalently, this fixes the brane tension as

$$\lambda \frac{4\times 10^{17}}{\alpha ^6}M_4^4=\left(\frac{10^{15}\mathrm{GeV}}{\alpha ^{3/2}}\right)^4,$$
(14)
or the five-dimensional Planck mass as

$$M_5=\frac{2.3\times 10^3}{\alpha }M_4=\frac{3\times 10^{16}\mathrm{GeV}}{\alpha }.$$
(15)
For consistency it should be verified that enough inflation can indeed occur. The assumption that the scalar field is confined to the brane becomes unreliable if $`V>M_5^4`$. Imposing this condition along with the COBE normalization leads to the simple result

$$N_{\mathrm{max}}=4\times 10^5,$$
(16)
independent of both $`\alpha `$ and $`\lambda `$. This large dimensionless number has its origin in the small dimensionless number corresponding to the observed temperature anisotropy. It may be that more inflation is possible before the scalar field becomes confined to the brane, but the observable last 50 or so $`e`$-foldings will be in that regime.

The spectral index of the density perturbation spectrum can also be found following Ref. , leading to

$$n=1\frac{4}{N+1}.$$
(17)
This result is independent of both $`\alpha `$ and the brane tension, and with the usual assumption of 50 $`e`$-foldings gives $`n=0.92`$. This is compatible with current observations (e.g. see Ref. ), but can be strongly tested in future.

In the high-energy limit of the braneworld scenario the contribution of gravitational waves relative to density perturbations is suppressed, and the relative amplitude is given by

$$\frac{A_\mathrm{T}^2}{A_\mathrm{S}^2}\frac{3M_4^2}{16\pi }\left(\frac{V^{}}{V}\right)^2\frac{2\lambda }{V}0.03,$$
(18)
which again is independent of all model parameters. This is a significant level of production, not far from current upper limits; in terms of the commonly-used quantity $`r4\pi A_\mathrm{T}^2/A_\mathrm{S}^2`$ we have $`r0.4`$, and it is believed that the Planck satellite will eventually measure $`r`$ with an error bar of around 0.05.

### C Reheating by gravitational particle production

At the end of inflation, the scalar field density is given by $`V_{\mathrm{end}}`$. Some of this energy needs to be converted to conventional matter to restore the hot big bang cosmology. Usually this is brought about by decay of the inflaton field, though this could only proceed to completion if the potential is modified to introduce a minimum.

Instead, we take advantage of the possibility of reheating by gravitational particle production , where the required particles are produced quantum mechanically from the time-varying gravitational field. Standard calculations  give the density of particles produced at the end of inflation as

$$\rho _\mathrm{R}0.01g_{\mathrm{prod}}H_{\mathrm{end}}^40.2g_{\mathrm{prod}}\frac{V_{\mathrm{end}}^4}{\lambda ^2M_4^4},$$
(19)
where $`g_{\mathrm{prod}}`$ is the number of fields experiencing particle production, likely to be between 10 and 100. This result depends only on the fields’ equations of motion and the expansion rate, and so remains valid in the braneworld scenario. The relative densities at the end of inflation are

$$\frac{\rho _\mathrm{R}}{\rho _\varphi }=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0.2}g_{\mathrm{prod}}\frac{V_{\mathrm{end}}^3}{\lambda ^2M_4^4}=5g_{\mathrm{prod}}\times 10^{17},$$
(20)
where the last equality uses the COBE normalization, Eqs. (13) and (14). The numerical value of the radiation density, given the COBE normalization, is

$$\rho _\mathrm{R}g_{\mathrm{prod}}\left(\frac{10^{11}\mathrm{GeV}}{\alpha }\right)^4,$$
(21)
which if immediately thermalized would give a temperature

$$T_{\mathrm{end}}\frac{10^{11}\mathrm{GeV}}{\alpha }\left(\frac{g_{\mathrm{prod}}}{g_{}}\right)^{1/4},$$
(22)
where $`g_{}`$ is the total number of species in the thermal bath (which may be somewhat higher than $`g_{\mathrm{prod}}`$). This temperature is around that at which thermal production of gravitinos via two-particle collisions becomes problematic , and only more detailed calculations (including the amount of cooling during the final thermalization) can clarify whether the gravitino limit can be satisfied. It also needs to be determined whether or not non-thermal gravitino production might be significant (see e.g. Ref. ). See Ref.  for other model-building difficulties that may arise in constructing a working scenario.

Although the ratio of radiation to scalar field densities at the end of inflation is small, it is possible for the radiation to become dominant. Once the high-energy correction to the Friedmann equation becomes unimportant, the potential is so steep that the evolution becomes completely kinetic-energy dominated, with $`\rho _\varphi 1/a^6`$. We first assume this behaviour sets in as soon as inflation ends, and examine the opposite case in the next paragraph. When the kinetic energy is completely dominant, we have

$$\frac{\rho _\mathrm{R}}{\rho _\varphi }a^2.$$
(23)
From Eq. (20), we can estimate that the radiation comes to dominate after the Universe has expanded by a factor around $`10^7`$ to $`10^8`$ after inflation, at which stage the temperature, which obeys $`T1/a`$, is

$$T\frac{10^3\mathrm{GeV}}{\alpha }.$$
(24)
We see that radiation domination sets in comfortably before nucleosynthesis.

This needs some correction to allow for the period between the end of inflation and the onset of validity of the usual Friedmann equation at $`\rho 2\lambda `$, which will cause a delay before Eq. (23) applies. As inflation has ended, we know that $`\rho _\varphi `$ must fall off at least as quickly as $`1/a`$.***In the standard cosmology this would be $`1/a^2`$, coming from the inflationary condition $`p<\rho /3`$, but in the high-energy limit of brane cosmology the inflationary condition becomes $`p2\rho /3`$ . This means a worst-case scenario where the scale factor has increased by an extra factor of $`(V_{\mathrm{end}}/2\lambda )^{5/6}=\alpha ^{5/3}`$ by the time the usual Friedmann equation sets in, as compared to the argument of the previous paragraph. The radiation temperature at that time is therefore smaller by that factor, and so extra expansion by a factor $`\alpha ^{10/3}`$, will be required to bring on radiation domination. For typical parameters this may reduce the temperature at the onset of radiation domination by a factor between a hundred and a thousand as compared to Eq. (24), which is still early enough for successful nucleosynthesis. In any event, this worst-case scenario will not be attained in practice, leading to a higher temperature at the onset of radiation domination.

Notice that while in this cosmology the formal epoch of radiation domination does not begin until quite a low temperature \[Eq. (24), corrected as described in the previous paragraph\], the radiation originally was created at a much higher temperature \[Eq. (22)\]. It may well be therefore that processes such as baryogenesis might occur within the radiation fluid at an epoch before it comes to dominate the density of the Universe — see Ref. .

### D Scaling in the present Universe

The period of kinetic domination will not last indefinitely; it is well known that the late-time behaviour for steep exponential potentials is a scaling solution where the scalar field exhibits the same redshift dependence as the dominant fluid in the Universe . The scaling density, assuming spatial flatness, is

$$\mathrm{\Omega }_\varphi =\frac{3(w+1)}{\alpha ^2},$$
(25)
where the dominant fluid has equation of state $`p=w\rho `$. If the scaling solution is already attained by nucleosynthesis, the field acts as extra relativistic species and will adversely affect the standard picture unless $`\alpha ^220`$ . If the scaling solution is not attained by nucleosynthesis (as may well be the case as the kinetic energy has a tendency to overshoot the scaling solution by several orders of magnitude before approaching it from below ) this limit can be evaded, but a similar limit can be derived from the effect of the scalar field on density perturbations at the present epoch .

Because the scalar field survives to the present, a suitable feature in the potential near its present value can give rise to quintessence behaviour; this is a version of the quintessential inflation scenario of Peebles and Vilenkin  in which the same scalar field gives both early Universe inflation and the present observed acceleration. More attractively, one could use a different form of the potential, such as an inverse power-law, which allows a natural transition to quintessence at late times and which merits further investigation. Our model allows such a scenario with a much simpler choice of potential than in Einstein gravity models due to our exploitation of the braneworld effects.

## III Conclusions

We have presented a non-standard model of inflation, made possible by braneworld-motivated corrections to the Friedmann equation at high energies. The novel ingredients are that inflation becomes possible for a class of potentials ordinarily too steep to sustain accelerated expansion, with the end of inflation brought on by the braneworld corrections losing their dominance. While standard reheating could be considered, this scenario allows a particularly natural implementation of reheating via gravitational particle production, and we have confirmed that all existing constraints can be satisfied.

For the particular implementation of this idea using steep exponential potentials, a distinctive prediction is that the spectral index of density perturbations is given by $`n0.92`$, independent of all parameters (except the number of $`e`$-foldings to the end of inflation). This prediction, along with the large predicted amplitude of gravitational waves, is readily testable with upcoming experiments.

Although we have not attempted to place this scenario within the context of a realistic particle physics model, it should be emphasized that current M-theory models have a number of likely candidate scalar fields with steep exponential potentials living on the brane. These include the dilaton in five–dimensional heterotic M-theory , the dilaton present in self–tuning mechanisms to cancel the cosmological constant on the brane , and combinations of the dilaton and moduli fields that arise in heterotic M-theory when studying the cosmological stabilization of these fields . The important point is that all of these models would be affected by the presence of the corrections to the Friedmann equation, and intriguingly this could open up the possibility of inflation occurring before the moduli fields become stabilized.

## Acknowledgments

E.J.C. was supported by PPARC, and J.E.L. by the Royal Society and in part by the Sussex PPARC visitors grant. We thank Andre Lukas and David Wands for useful discussions, and Lev Kofman and Alex Vilenkin for their comments.


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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Ever since the discovery of the rising $`K^+p`$ and $`\pi ^+p`$ total cross sections in Protvino , experimental data on hadronic total cross sections are among the most reliable tools for checking models of the Pomeron. The so-called ”enhanced” cuts were among the first theoretical ideas used to explain the phenomenon . Since then, both the theory and experiment made enormous progress. Apart from hadronic reactions, measured now at much higher energies, photon-induced reactions also confirm the universal rise of the total cross sections. Empirical fits searching a universal Pomeron fitting all of the existing data were made e.g. in refs. .

The simplest models as the contribution to the total cross sections can be classified in three groups:

the dipole Pomeron: $`\sigma \mathrm{log}s`$ ;

the ”Froissart model”: $`\sigma \mathrm{log}^2s`$ ;

the ”supercritical” Pomeron: $`\sigma s^\epsilon `$  (actually, the list of relevant references is much longer and we apologize to those omitted there).

The last option, the supercritical one, in QCD corresponds to an infinite ladder of reggeized gluon exchange . At finite energies, however only a finite number of diagrams contributes, giving rise to a finite series in logarithms of $`s`$  like

$$\sigma \sigma _0+\sigma _1\mathrm{log}s+\sigma _2\mathrm{log}^2s,$$
(1)
respecting the Froissart bound. In the language of Regge-poles such a finite series corresponds to multipoles .

On the other hand, an obvious way to generalize  the Donnachie-Landshoff model  is to add another constant, whenafter it becomes

$$\sigma \sigma _0+\sigma _1s^\epsilon .$$
(2)
In ref.  the model (2) was interpreted as that corresponding to two Pomeron poles.

Recently a detail analysis of three Pomeron models, namely

$$\text{I. }P\sigma _0s^\epsilon ,$$
(3)
$$\text{II. }P\sigma _0+\sigma _1\mathrm{log}s,$$
(4)
$$\text{III. }P\sigma _0+\sigma _2\mathrm{log}^2s,$$
(5)
was performed. Besides the Pomeron non-exchange-degenerate sub-leading contributions were included. The intercepts of the $`f/a`$ and $`\omega /\rho `$ Regge trajectories were assumed to be different.

The analysis  is the most complete and professional one among those existing. It shows e.g. that the lowest energy, where the above parametrization works (i.e. $`\chi ^2/dof1`$) is $`\sqrt{s}=9`$ $`GeV`$.

In the present paper we continue the program initiated by  by scrutinizing two more earlier unexplored models for the Pomeron. We show that they do not require the secondary trajectories to be exchange-degenerate. This disputable point was recently raised also in ref. . As seen from Fig. 1 the 10 resonances belonging to the 4 different $`I^G(J^{PC})`$ families $`\rho \omega f_2a_2`$ are compatible with a unique linear exchange-degenerate Regge trajectory with $`\alpha (0)=0.48`$ intercept.

Our procedure follows the paper  as close as possible. Firstly, we use the same data sample , secondly, we use the same number of free parameters (namely, 16), thirdly, we calculate the errors in the same way as the authors of ref.  do. Moreover, we use the same notation. This universality makes it possible to confront the resulting fits without any bias.

## 2 Alternating series for the Pomeron

Let us write the real and imaginary parts of the forward elastic scattering amplitude as

$$\frac{1}{s}ImA_{h_1h_2}\left(s\right)=ImP\left(s\right)+ImR\left(s\right),$$
(6)
$$\frac{1}{s}ReA_{h_1h_2}\left(s\right)=ReP\left(s\right)+ReR\left(s\right),$$
(7)
where

$$ImP\left(s\right)=\lambda _{h_1h_2}\left[A+B\mathrm{log}\left(\frac{s}{s_0}\right)+C\mathrm{log}^2\left(\frac{s}{s_0}\right)\right],$$
(8)
$$ReP\left(s\right)=\frac{\pi }{2}\lambda _{h_1h_2}B+\pi \lambda _{h_1h_2}C\mathrm{log}\left(\frac{s}{s_0}\right),$$
(9)
comes from the Pomeron contribution and

$$ImR\left(s\right)=\left[Y_1^{h_1h_2}Y_2^{h_1h_2}\right]s^\eta ,$$
(10)
$$ReR\left(s\right)=\left[Y_1^{h_1h_2}\mathrm{cot}\left(\frac{1\eta }{2}\pi \right)\pm Y_2^{h_1h_2}\mathrm{tan}\left(\frac{1\eta }{2}\pi \right)\right]s^\eta ,$$
(11)
corresponds to the contribution of two exchange-degenerate Regge trajectories as in the classical paper of Donnachie and Landshoff . Everybody is aware of the fact that exchange degeneracy is violated. The question is only the amount of this violation and the price to be paid for the introduction of additional free parameters. The quality of our fits show (see below) that exchange degeneracy is a reasonable approximation to reality.

We have fitted the above model to the data on total cross sections and the ratio of the real to imaginary part of $`pp`$, $`\overline{p}p`$, $`\pi ^\pm p`$, $`K^\pm p`$, $`\gamma p`$ and $`\gamma \gamma `$ scattering, starting from $`\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{min}}}`$ until the highest available energies. As in ref. , we have studied the stability of our fit by varying the lower limit of the fit $`\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{min}}}`$ between $`3`$ and $`13`$ $`GeV`$. The number of the experimental data points and the resulting fit (value of $`\chi ^2/dof`$) as well as the dependence of the fitted parameters on the lower bound $`\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{min}}}`$ are presented in Fig. 2.

The results of our fits basically are consistent with those of ref. . The minor difference is in the limiting value $`\chi ^2/dof1`$, reached at $`\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{min}}}=10`$ $`GeV`$ in our fits (instead of $`9`$ of ref. ). The difference obviously comes from exchange degeneracy of the subleading trajectories imposed here but relaxed in . The fits for the total cross sections and $`\rho `$-ratio (for $`\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{min}}}=10`$ $`GeV`$) extrapolated to $`\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{min}}}3`$ $`GeV`$, are shown in Fig. 3.

An important result of our fit is that the coefficients of the series (1) have alternating signs (see Table 1). This property and the rapid decrease of their absolute values (as $`1/10`$) provides the fast convergence of the series and ensures the applicability of this approximation at still much higher energies. The physical motivation of such a finite series representation of the Pomeron was discussed earlier - both in the context of Regge multipoles  and QCD .

| $`A`$ (mb) | $`B`$ (mb) | $`C`$ (mb) | $`\eta `$ | $`\chi ^2`$/d.o.f. | statistics |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`37.1\pm 1.6`$ | $`1.55\pm 0.33`$ | $`0.275\pm 0.018`$ | $`0.497\pm 0.019`$ | $`1.03`$ | $`314`$ |
|  | $`pp`$ | $`\pi p`$ | $`Kp`$ | $`\gamma p\times 10^3`$ | $`\gamma \gamma \times 10^4`$ |
| $`\lambda `$ | $`1`$ | $`0.6248\pm 0.0019`$ | $`0.5502\pm 0.0029`$ | $`3.068\pm 0.050`$ | $`0.0822\pm 0.0059`$ |
| $`Y_1`$ (mb) | $`49.5\pm 4.7`$ | $`12.0\pm 2.4`$ | $`6.2\pm 2.8`$ | $`44\pm 26`$ | $`0.5\pm 4.2`$ |
| $`Y_2`$ (mb) | $`25.1\pm 2.9`$ | $`5.72\pm 0.69`$ | $`10.5\pm 1.2`$ |  |  |

Table 1: Values of the fitted parameters in the alternating series Pomeron model

(6)-(11), with a cut-off $`\sqrt{s}=10`$ $`GeV`$ and $`s_0=1`$ $`GeV^2`$ fixed.

## 3 Two-component Pomeron

The main virtue of the D-L model of the Pomeron  is its simplicity. Although it the single-term (factorizable!) D-L model (appended by a nonleading term) fits the data remarkably well , its possible extensions involving more free parameters are obvious and were discussed by various authors . One possibility is to add a constant term, resulting in the following expression for the Pomeron contribution

$$P\sigma _0+\sigma _1s^\epsilon .$$
(12)
Written as

$$ImP\left(s\right)=\lambda _{h_1h_2}\left[A+Bs^\delta \right],$$
(13)
$$ReP\left(s\right)=\lambda _{h_1h_2}Bs^\delta \mathrm{cot}\left(\frac{1+\delta }{2}\pi \right),$$
(14)
the model has the same number of free parameters as in the previous case (Section 2) or in ref. . Similar to the previous case, see eqs. (10) and (11), the model is appended by a pair of exchange-degenerate sub-leading trajectories.

The optimal value of $`\chi ^2/dof1`$, as in the previous case, is reached when $`\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{min}}}=10`$ $`GeV`$.

The resulting fits are shown in Fig. 4. The fits for the total cross sections and $`\rho `$\- ratio for $`\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{min}}}=10`$ $`GeV`$, extrapolated in the same way as for the previous case (see Section 2), are shown in Fig. 5.

Table 2 quotes the values of the fitted parameters with their errors calculated with the ”threshold value” $`\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{min}}}=10`$ $`GeV`$. A pair of exchange-degenerate sub-leading trajectories was also included.

| $`ϵ`$ | $`A`$ (mb) | $`B`$ (mb) | $`\eta `$ | $`\chi ^2`$/d.o.f. | statistics |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`0.1286\pm 0.0092`$ | $`18.7\pm 2.3`$ | $`8.3\pm 1.4`$ | $`0.480\pm 0.018`$ | $`1.09`$ | $`314`$ |
|  | $`pp`$ | $`\pi p`$ | $`Kp`$ | $`\gamma p\times 10^3`$ | $`\gamma \gamma \times 10^4`$ |
| $`\lambda `$ | $`1`$ | $`0.6253\pm 0.0019`$ | $`0.5514\pm 0.0030`$ | $`3.068\pm 0.051`$ | $`0.0822\pm 0.0061`$ |
| $`Y_1`$ (mb) | $`64.2\pm 4.0`$ | $`22.8\pm 1.5`$ | $`4.5\pm 1.8`$ | $`100\pm 22`$ | $`2.1\pm 3.8`$ |
| $`Y_2`$ (mb) | $`22.5\pm 2.4`$ | $`5.3\pm 0.6`$ | $`9.5\pm 1.0`$ |  |  |

Table 2: Values of the fitted parameters in the two-component Pomeron model (6),

(7), (10), (11), (13) and (14), with a cut-off $`\sqrt{s}=10`$ $`GeV`$ and $`s_0=1`$ $`GeV^2`$ fixed.

## 4 Conclusions

We have fitted two hitherto unexplored models for the Pomeron to the data and compared the results with other fits . We find that:

1. Exchange degeneracy is a good approximation to reality;

2. The series (1) has alternating signs;

3. The quality of the models fitted is not inferior to similar ones with the same number of free parameters.

4. Both $`\epsilon `$ and $`\eta `$ correspond to those explored in .

The authors are grateful to L. L. Jenkovszky for useful discussions and support.


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# Radiative mass in QCD at high density

## Abstract

We show that radiatively generated Majorana mass for antiquarks is same as the Cooper-pair gap. We then calculate the electromagnetic corrections to mass of particles in the color-flavor locking phase of QCD at high density. The mass spectrum forms multiplets under $`SU(2)_V\times U(1)_V`$. The charged pions and kaons get the electromagnetic mass which is proportional to the Cooper-pair gap.

It has been known for more than two decades that the ground state of dense matter is color superconductor . However, intense study on color superconductivity has begun quite recently, after realizing that it may lead to a large superconducting gap , which can be explored by heavy ion collision experiments or in the core of neutron stars. Superconducting quark matter has two different phases, depending on density. At intermediate density, the Cooper pair is color anti-triplet but flavor singlet, breaking only the color symmetry down to a subgroup, $`SU(3)_cSU(2)_c`$. For high density where the strange quark is light, compared to the chemical potential, $`m_s<\mu `$, the Cooper-pair condensate is predicted to take a so-called color-flavor locking (CFL) form :

$$\psi _{Li}^a(\stackrel{}{p})\psi _{Lj}^b(\stackrel{}{p})=\psi _{Ri}^a(\stackrel{}{p})\psi _{Rj}^b(\stackrel{}{p})=k_1\delta _i^a\delta _j^b+k_2\delta _j^a\delta _i^b,$$
(1)
where $`i,j=1,2,3`$ and $`a,b=1,2,3`$ are flavor and color indices, respectively. At much higher density ($`\mu \mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$), $`k_1(\mathrm{\Delta }_0)k_2`$ and color-flavor locking phase is shown to be energetically preferred .

Recently, the meson mass in the CFL phase has been calculated by several groups . It is found that the (pseudo) Nambu-Goldstone boson mass due to the current quark mass vanishes at high density, since the Dirac mass connects quark with anti-quark and is thus a subleading operator in $`1/\mu `$ expansion, provided that the Majorana mass for anti-quarks, called antigap, is not too large. In this letter, we calculate the Majorana mass (or antigap) of antiquarks to implement the above results and then we calculate the electromagnetic corrections, which is a leading order in $`1/\mu `$ expansion, to the particle mass in the CFL phase, using the high density effective theory developed in .

At low energy, $`E<\mu `$, the quarks near the Fermi surface are relevant degrees of freedom while anti-quarks, the holes deep in the Dirac sea, are irrelevant and decoupled, since the energy of quarks near the Fermi surface in perturbative QCD is $`E_+=\mu +\sqrt{\stackrel{}{p}^2+m^2}\stackrel{}{l}\stackrel{}{v}_F<\mu `$, while anti-quarks have energy $`E_{}=\mu +\sqrt{\stackrel{}{p}^2+m^2}2\mu +\stackrel{}{l}\stackrel{}{v}_F>\mu `$, where we decompose the quark momentum as $`\stackrel{}{p}=\stackrel{}{p}_F+\stackrel{}{l}`$ with $`|\stackrel{}{l}|<\mu `$, and $`\stackrel{}{v}_F\stackrel{}{p}_F/\mu `$ is the Fermi velocity.

Since an arbitrarily small energy can create a pair of quarks and holes near the Fermi surface, quarks and holes can form pairs and condense to gain energy if any attraction is provided. It turns out that color anti-triplet diquark condensates are energetically more preferred, compared to particle-hole condensates . Since magnetic gluons are not screened in dense quark matter, the (long-range) magnetic gluon exchange interaction leads to a much bigger Cooper-pair gap, which is in hard-dense loop (HDL) approximation given as ,

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_0\frac{\mu }{g_s^5}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{3\pi ^2}{\sqrt{2}g_s}\right).$$
(2)
Being irrelevant modes and thus decoupled from the low energy dynamics, anti-quarks do not get dynamical Majorana mass (namely, do not form condensates) in dense matter, since it is energetically not preferred. However, they will get a Majorana mass radiatively once a Cooper-pair gap opens for quarks (or holes) near the Fermi surface, since all symmetries that forbid Majorana mass for anti-quarks are then broken. The Cooper-pair gap, $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, can be transmitted to anti-quarks through their couplings to quarks near the Fermi surface or to gluons. In the leading order in loop expansion, there are two diagrams that contribute to the anti-quark Majorana mass, denoted as $`\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}_0`$, shown in Fig. 1. From the first diagram \[Fig. 1(a)\], we get

$`\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}_0=(ig_s)^2{\displaystyle \frac{d^4l}{(2\pi )^4}\gamma _{}^\mu \frac{T^A\mathrm{\Delta }T^A}{l_{}^2\mathrm{\Delta }^2(l_{})}\gamma _{}^\nu D_{\mu \nu }(l)},`$ (3)
where $`\gamma _{}^\mu =\gamma ^\mu \gamma _{}^\mu `$ with $`\gamma _{}^\mu =(\gamma ^0,\stackrel{}{v}_F\stackrel{}{\gamma }\stackrel{}{v}_F)`$ and $`D_{\mu \nu }`$ is the (Higgsed) gluon propagator. Note that antiquarks interact with quarks near the Fermi surface via the magnetic gluons only, whose propagator is given Euclidean space as

$$D_{\mu \nu }^m(l)=P_{\mu \nu }^T\frac{|\stackrel{}{l}|}{|\stackrel{}{l}|^3+M_0^2\mathrm{\Delta }_0+\pi M^2|l_0|/2},$$
(4)
where the polarization tensor $`P_{ij}^T=\delta _{ij}l_il_j/|\stackrel{}{l}|^2`$ and $`P_{00}^T=0=P_{0i}^T`$, the Meissner mass $`M_0^2=\alpha _s\mu ^2/2`$ and the Debye screening mass $`M^2=3g_s^2\mu ^2/(4\pi ^2)`$. Taking the trace over gamma matrices in Eq. (3), we get in Euclidean space

$`\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}_0={\displaystyle \frac{2g_s^2}{3}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}^4l}{(2\pi )^4}\frac{|\stackrel{}{l}|}{|\stackrel{}{l}|^3+M_0^2\mathrm{\Delta }_0+\pi M^2|l_0|/2}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }(l_{})}{l_{}^2+\mathrm{\Delta }^2}},`$ (5)
which is nothing but the Cooper-pair gap at zero external momentum except that here we have Higgsed magnetic gluons only, instead of full gluons. If we take $`\mathrm{\Delta }(l_{})\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$, we get

$$\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}_0=\mathrm{\Delta }_0\frac{g_s^2}{72\pi ^2}\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{4\mu ^2}{\mathrm{\Delta }_0^2}\right)\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{48\mu ^3}{5\pi M^2\mathrm{\Delta }_0}\right)=\mathrm{\Delta }_0\left(1+O(g_s)\right),$$
(6)
where we used in the logarithm $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0\mu g_s^5\mathrm{exp}\left(6\pi /g_s\right)`$, the solution to the gap equation in the constant gap approximation . The contribution from the second diagram in Fig. 1(b) is $`g_s^2\mathrm{\Delta }_0\mathrm{ln}(\mu ^2/\mathrm{\Delta }_0^2)`$, which is suppressed by $`O(g_s)`$. Therefore, we find that in the leading order the Majorana mass for the anti-quarks is same as that of quarks and holes near the Fermi surface. Because of this Majorana mass term of antiquarks, additional corrections will be generated to the Dirac mass term. As in , if we introduce the charge conjugated field $`\psi _c=C\overline{\psi }^T`$ with $`C=i\gamma ^0\gamma ^2`$ and decompose the quark field into states ($`\psi _+`$) near the Fermi surface and the states ($`\psi _{}`$) deep in the Dirac sea, the Dirac mass term can be rewritten as

$$m_q\overline{\psi }\psi =\frac{1}{2}m_q\left(\overline{\psi }_+\psi _{}+\overline{\psi }_{}\psi _+\right)+\frac{1}{2}m_q^T\left(\overline{\psi }_{c+}\psi _c+\overline{\psi }_c\psi _{c+}\right).$$
(7)
Since now the states in the Dirac sea can propagate into their charge conjugated states via the radiatively generated Majorana mass term, the Dirac mass term becomes, if one integrates out $`\psi _{}`$ fields,

$$m_q\overline{\psi }\psi =\frac{m_q^2}{2\mu }\psi _+^{}\left(1\frac{iV}{2\mu }\right)\psi _++\frac{m_qm_q^T}{4\mu ^2}\psi _+^{}\mathrm{\Delta }_0\psi _{c+}+\mathrm{},$$
(8)
where $`V^\mu =(1,\stackrel{}{v}_F)`$ and the ellipsis denotes the terms higher order in $`1/\mu `$. Then, the vacuum energy shift due to the Dirac mass term is $`m_q^2\mathrm{\Delta }_0^2\mathrm{ln}(\mu ^2/\mathrm{\Delta }_0^2)`$ in the leading order,In the Erratum , Son and Stephanov also found the $`1/\mu `$ dependence of the meson mass. But, they claim that there is no logarithmic correction to the meson mass, contrary to all others’ results . In the effective theory point of view, the operator, which corresponds to the cross diagram they claim to cancel the logarithm, does not exist in the leading order. which shows the meson mass due to the Dirac mass indeed vanishes at asymptotic density, $`m_\pi ^2m_q^2\mathrm{\Delta }_0^2/\mu ^2\mathrm{ln}(\mu ^2/\mathrm{\Delta }_0^2)`$, since the vacuum energy in the meson Lagrangian is $`m_\pi ^2F^2`$ with the pion decay constant $`F\mu `$ .

Now, we calculate the electromagnetic mass of particles in the CFL phase. Since the color and flavor are locked in the CFL phase, simultaneous rotations of color and flavor space are only unbroken, leading to an interesting symmetry-breaking pattern,

$$SU(3)_c\times SU(3)_L\times SU(3)_R\times U(1)_BSU(3)_V\times Z_2,$$
(9)
where $`SU(3)_V`$ is the diagonal subgroup of three $`SU(3)`$’s. The particle spectrum of the CFL phase is then as following: There are 8 massive gluons of mass, $`m_gg_s\mu `$ by Higgs mechanism, which form an vector meson octet under $`SU(3)_V`$ and there are 9 massive quarks, $`\psi _i^a`$, which are octet and singlet under $`SU(3)_V`$. The octet, $`\psi _8=P_8\psi `$, has mass $`k_2`$ and the singlet, $`\psi _S=P_1\psi `$, has mass $`3k_1+k_2`$, which can be seen if we project out the gap as

$$k_1\delta _i^a\delta _j^b+k_2\delta _j^a\delta _i^a=k_2Q_{8ij}^{ab}+(3k_1+k_2)P_{1ij}^{ab}$$
(10)
where the projectors are $`Q_{8ij}^{ab}=\delta _j^a\delta _i^b1/3\delta _i^a\delta _j^b`$, $`P_{1ij}^{ab}=1/3\delta _i^a\delta _j^b`$, and $`Q_8^2=P_8`$ . Finally, we have nine Nambu-Goldstone (NG) bosons, consisting of meson octet and singlet, associated with chiral symmetry breaking and baryon superfluidity, respectively.

Since the Cooper-pair carries electric charge, there will be mixing between gluons and photons through the Cooper-pair gap. A linear combination of two fields, called a modified photon, $`\stackrel{~}{A}_\mu =A_\mu \mathrm{cos}\theta +A_\mu ^Y\mathrm{sin}\theta `$, remain massless and couples to fields with strength $`\stackrel{~}{e}=e\mathrm{cos}\theta `$, where $`\mathrm{tan}\theta =e/g_s`$ and $`A_\mu ^Y`$ is the gluon field corresponding to the color hypercharge, $`Y=\mathrm{diag}(2/3,1/3,1/3)`$. Once we turn on the electromagnetism, the global symmetry $`SU(3)_V`$ will break explicitly down to $`SU(2)_V\times U(1)_V`$, since the electric charge $`Q=\mathrm{diag}.(2/3,1/3,1/3)`$ is not flavor singlet or equivalently the charge of $`U(1)_{\stackrel{~}{Q}}`$, modified electromagnetism is not identity but given in the color-flavor locked space as

$$\stackrel{~}{Q}_{ai}=\left(\begin{array}{ccc}0& 1& 1\\ 1& 0& 0\\ 1& 0& 0\end{array}\right).$$
(11)
Under $`SU(2)_V`$, the octets of $`SU(3)_V`$ are decomposed as $`8=32\overline{2}1`$, among which the doublet has $`\stackrel{~}{Q}=+1`$ and the anti-doublet has $`\stackrel{~}{Q}=1`$ and all others together with $`SU(3)_V`$ singlets are neutral under $`U(1)_{\stackrel{~}{Q}}`$. All particles with $`U(1)_{\stackrel{~}{Q}}`$ charge will get (modified) electromagnetic masses.

We first calculate the electromagnetic mass to the mesons. The leading-order contribution to the vacuum energy, due to the (modified) electromagnetic interaction, is given by a diagram, shown in Fig. 2, which is

$$\delta E=\frac{\stackrel{~}{e}^2}{2}\underset{A}{}\mathrm{d}^4x\stackrel{~}{D}^{\mu \nu }(x)\mathrm{\Omega }\left|\mathrm{T}J_\mu ^A(x)J_\nu ^A(0)\right|\mathrm{\Omega },$$
(12)
where $`|\mathrm{\Omega }`$ denotes the CFL vacuum and $`\stackrel{~}{D}_{\mu \nu }`$ is the modified photon propagator in HDL approximation. At low energy, modified photons will not interact with color superconductors. But at high energy, modified photons of energy larger than twice of the gap will get screened and Landau damped, with a screening mass $`\stackrel{~}{M}^2(8/9)\mathrm{sin}^2\theta M^2`$, since it can break Cooper-pairs and scatter with the gaped quarks in the Fermi sea,

Since the main contributions to the loop integration in Eq. (12) come from photon energy larger than the gap, we get

$$V_{\mathrm{em}}=4\frac{\stackrel{~}{e}^2}{8\pi }\mathrm{\Delta }_{0}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}\mu ^2\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{\mu ^2}{\mathrm{\Delta }_0^2}\right)\left[\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{16\mu ^3}{\pi \stackrel{~}{M}^2\mathrm{\Delta }_0}\right)\right]^218\pi \left(\frac{\stackrel{~}{e}}{g_s}\right)^2\mathrm{\Delta }_0^2\mu ^2\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{\mu ^2}{\mathrm{\Delta }_0^2}\right),$$
(13)
where the gap in the second logarithm is traded with the coupling $`g_s`$ by Eq. (2). The mass of (pseudo) Nambu-Goldstone bosons is then just the curvature of the vacuum energy at the origin of the NG boson manifold ,

$$m_{ab}^2=\frac{1}{F^2}\frac{^2}{\alpha _a\alpha _b}\delta E(U)|_{U=1},$$
(14)
where $`U`$ is a unitary matrix in the chiral group and $`\alpha _a`$’s are its coordinates in the group space. We therefore find the charged NG bosons get the (modified) electromagnetic mass

$$m_\pi ^2=\frac{9\pi }{4}\left(\frac{\stackrel{~}{e}}{g_s}\right)^2\mathrm{\Delta }_0^2\frac{\mu ^2}{F^2}\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{\mu ^2}{\mathrm{\Delta }_0^2}\right).$$
(15)
Since the pion decay constant $`F0.209\mu `$ , the charged NG bosons get the electromagnetic mass $`m_\pi 12.7\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{\Delta }_0\left[\mathrm{ln}(\mu ^2/\mathrm{\Delta }_0^2)\right]^{1/2}`$.

Finally, we calculate the (modified) electromagnetic mass of charged gluons and quarks. Since the (modified) photon contributes to the self energy of charged gluons and quarks, we just calculate the one-loop corrections due to the (modified) photon to the self energy to get electromagnetic mass for the charged gluons and quarks

$$\delta m_g^2\stackrel{~}{e}^2\mathrm{\Delta }_0^2\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{\mu ^2}{\mathrm{\Delta }_0^2}\right)\mathrm{and}\delta m_\psi \stackrel{~}{e}^2\mathrm{\Delta }_0\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{\mu ^2}{\mathrm{\Delta }_0^2}\right).$$
(16)
To conclude, we show that the anti-quarks, holes deep in the Dirac sea, get Majorana mass radiatively, which is same as the Cooper-pair gap. We calculate the (modified) electromagnetic mass of particles in the CFL color superconductor. As the modified electromagnetic interaction breaks explicitly the global $`SU(3)_V`$ symmetry down to $`SU(2)_V\times U(1)_V`$, the degeneracy in the mass spectrum is lifted such that among octets the $`SU(2)_V`$ doublets become more massive. Especially, the charged pions and kaons get electromagnetic mass, of order of the Cooper-pair gap, and do not vanish at high density, while neutral mesons become massless at asymptotic density.

###### Acknowledgements.

The author wishes to thank T. Lee, D.-P. Min, and K. Rajagopal for useful comments and the Institute for Nuclear Theory at the University of Washington, where part of this work was done, for its hospitality. This work was supported by the academic research fund of Ministry of Education, Republic of Korea, Project No. BSRI-99-015-DI0114.


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

In supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model, supersymmetry (SUSY) is broken in some separate sector of the theory and communicated to visible sector fields through gauge or gravitational interactions. Gravitational effects typically lead to superpartner masses from contact terms suppressed by powers of the Planck scale, giving rise to superpartner masses of order $`m_{3/2}`$. If these contact terms are absent, superpartner masses of order $`m_{3/2}/(16\pi ^2)`$ are still generated due to the superconformal anomaly . This is called anomaly-mediated SUSY breaking (AMSB), and it naturally dominates if SUSY is broken on a separate brane . In AMSB, all soft masses are related to beta functions and anomalous dimensions, and are therefore completely determined by the quantum numbers of the relevant field up to the overall scale. In particular, squark masses other than the stop are determined to high accuracy by the gauge couplings, and therefore there are no dangerous flavor-changing neutral currents (FCNC’s).

The minimal version of AMSB is obtained by simply coupling the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) to AMSB. However, this gives rise to negative slepton mass-squared terms at the weak scale due to the signs of the $`SU(2)_W`$ and $`U(1)_Y`$ beta functions. Modifying the superpartner spectrum is nontrivial because the AMSB predictions are largely insensitive to heavy supersymmetric thresholds. Several solutions to this problem have been suggested . One is to change the effective theory at the weak scale to an extension of the MSSM . Another possibility relies on the fact that any heavy threshold affects the soft terms beyond leading order in the SUSY breaking. If the SUSY-breaking splittings of a heavy multiplet are large, there can be large threshold corrections to visible sector sparticle masses . Finally, Ref.  pointed out that if a heavy threshold is determined by a modulus field whose potential arises from SUSY breaking, the predictions for visible sparticle masses are changed. This latter mechanism is particularly attractive, and is the one we will employ in the present paper.

An obvious candidate for the heavy threshold is the grand unification (GUT) scale. In fact, we will show that there is a simple and robust mechanism in which AMSB gives rise to a VEV for a modulus field of order $`M_{\mathrm{Planck}}/(16\pi ^2)`$, precisely the right size of the GUT scale. (The mechanism is very similar to a mechanism first discussed in the context of gauge mediated models . Other mechanisms for dynamically generating the GUT scale were considered in .) In addition, this threshold can lead to a realistic superpartner spectrum. We present an explicit model that incorporates these features, while also explaining doublet-triplet splitting.

The phenomenology of this class of models is very interesting. The soft SUSY breaking masses can be obtained by starting with the AMSB soft masses at the GUT scale, and then running them down to the weak scale without large threshold corrections at the GUT scale.111If the GUT threshold were supersymmetric, the threshold corrections would be large, resulting in minimal AMSB predictions for the low-energy theory. Therefore, the gaugino masses generally unify at the GUT scale as in traditional hidden sector models or gauge-mediated models.

One constraint on this class of models is that extra structure is required to avoid FCNC’s. The problem is that dimension-4 Kähler terms can mix the modulus field with visible sector fields, giving rise to visible sector scalar masses of order $`X^2m_{3/2}^2/M_{\mathrm{Planck}}^2`$, where $`X`$ is the modulus VEV. For $`XM_{\mathrm{GUT}}10^{16}\text{GeV}`$, this is as large as the AMSB contribution, and there is no reason for this contribution to conserve flavor. This constraint applies to any model with a large modulus VEV that is determined by SUSY breaking. We will show that these terms can be naturally suppressed by assuming that the visible sector gauge and Higgs fields live on a ‘thick brane’, with the hidden sector and the visible sector matter fields localized at different positions within the brane.222The fact that ‘thick branes’ can modify naturalness in an interesting way was pointed out in Ref. . Alternatively, one can simply assume that the unwanted dimension-4 terms are suppressed; this does not appear as unnatural as the fine-tuning of conventional hidden-sector models, since we assume that *all* Kähler terms of a certain structure are small.

Because of the constraint above, we also briefly consider mechanisms that give lower thresholds. These can be motivated by GUT’s with intermediate scales. The results depend on the details of the models, but we conclude that there is a large class of interesting models.

This paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we review some basic facts about AMSB and the non-decoupling of heavy thersholds that are determined by moduli. In Section 3, we explain our mechanism of obtaining the GUT scale dynamically from the Planck scale. We also discuss several alternatives for generating a non-decoupling threshold. We construct a specific model in Section 4. Several possible mechanisms for generating a $`\mu `$ term are described in Section 5. We discuss phenomenology in Section 6. Our conclusions are in Section 7.

## 2 AMSB and Decoupling

If SUSY is broken in a sector that communicates with the visible sector only via gravity, and there are no contact interactions between the hidden and visible sector, then SUSY breaking will be communicated by anomaly mediation. In the visible sector, all SUSY breaking effects enter through the supergravity chiral compensator field

$$\varphi =1+\theta ^2F_\varphi ,$$
(1)
where $`F_\varphi m_{3/2}`$. The couplings of $`\varphi `$ are restricted by the fact that $`\varphi `$ is chiral, and by a spurion scale symmetry under which $`\varphi `$ has mass dimension $`+1`$. Therefore, $`\varphi `$ only appears in terms with dimensionful couplings. For example, a chiral mass term is covariantized by the replacement $`MM\varphi `$.

If the visible sector does not contain dimensionful couplings, there is no SUSY breaking at tree level. However, in a supersymmetric regulator, the cutoff is a dimensionful coupling that must be covariantized. This means that there are soft masses at loop level. Writing the Lagrangian for the visible sector

$$_{\mathrm{vis}}=d^4\theta Z(\mu /\mathrm{\Lambda })Q^{}e^VQ+\left(d^2\theta \left[S(\mu /\mathrm{\Lambda })W^\alpha W_\alpha +\lambda Q^3\right]+\text{h.c.}\right),$$
(2)
we replace

$$Z\left(\frac{\mu }{\mathrm{\Lambda }}\right)Z\left(\frac{\mu }{\mathrm{\Lambda }(\varphi ^{}\varphi )^{1/2}}\right),S\left(\frac{\mu }{\mathrm{\Lambda }}\right)S\left(\frac{\mu }{\mathrm{\Lambda }\varphi }\right).$$
(3)
Expanding in $`\theta `$, one finds the AMSB soft masses333This is analogous to the method of Giudice and Rattazzi  for extracting soft masses in models of gauge mediated supersymmetry breaking.

$`m_0^2(\mu )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}{\displaystyle \frac{\gamma (\mu )}{\mathrm{ln}\mu }}|F_\varphi |^2,`$ (4)
$`m_{1/2}(\mu )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\beta (\mu )}{g}}F_\varphi ,`$ (5)
$`A(\mu )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\gamma (\mu )F_\varphi .`$ (6)
Here $`\beta `$ is the gauge beta function and $`\gamma =\mathrm{ln}Z/\mathrm{ln}\mu `$ is the anomalous dimension.

It is not hard to see why a supersymmetric threshold does not affect the soft scalar masses. For example, the gaugino masses at one loop are parameterized by the chiral superfield

$$S=\frac{1}{2g^2}+\frac{m_\lambda }{g^2}\theta ^2.$$
(7)
The effective gauge coupling below a SUSY threshold $`M`$ is given by

$$S_{\mathrm{eff}}(\mu )=S_0+\frac{b}{16\pi ^2}\mathrm{ln}\frac{M}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}+\frac{b_{\mathrm{eff}}}{16\pi ^2}\mathrm{ln}\frac{\mu }{M},$$
(8)
where $`b`$ and $`b_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ are the beta function coefficients in the theory above and below the scale $`M`$, respectively. To covariantize, both $`M`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ are rescaled by $`\varphi `$:

$$S_{\mathrm{eff}}(\mu )S_0+\frac{b}{16\pi ^2}\mathrm{ln}\frac{M}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}+\frac{b_{\mathrm{eff}}}{16\pi ^2}\mathrm{ln}\frac{\mu }{M\varphi }.$$
(9)
We see that the soft masses depend only on the beta function in the effective theory below $`M`$. This result generalizes to all couplings to all orders in perturbation theory: the effective coupling is a function of the ratios $`\mu /M\mu /(M\varphi )`$ and $`M/\mathrm{\Lambda }M/\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. The threshold $`M`$ acts as the cutoff for the effective theory, and the soft masses are insensitive to the presence of the heavy threshold.444This only holds to leading order in the SUSY breaking. The soft terms typically receive corrections of order $`F^4/M^2`$ and higher due to the heavy threshold. These corrections are of course only relevant for small $`M`$.

It is worth reviewing how these results arise in terms of component diagrams. An explicit SUSY mass term $`M`$ will give rise to a SUSY breaking $`B`$-type mass-squared term $`MF_\varphi `$. Loop threshold corrections at the scale $`M`$ therefore give SUSY breaking masses of order $`F_\varphi /(16\pi ^2)`$, precisely the size of the AMSB contributions. These corrections ensure that the low-energy SUSY breaking masses coincide with the AMSB predictions appropriate to the effective theory below the scale $`M`$.

The results are completely different if the threshold is due to the VEV of a light field whose potential arises from SUSY breaking . The models we consider have a field $`X`$ with superpotential couplings of the form

$$\mathrm{\Delta }W=\lambda XT_1T_2.$$
(10)
In the SUSY limit, there is a flat direction with $`X0`$ along which the fields $`T_{1,2}`$ get masses $`\lambda X`$. Integrating out $`T_{1,2}`$ at the scale $`X`$ we can read the gaugino mass off the low-energy gauge coupling function

$$S_{\mathrm{eff}}(\mu )S_0+\frac{b}{16\pi ^2}\mathrm{ln}\frac{\lambda X}{\mathrm{\Lambda }\varphi }+\frac{b_{\mathrm{eff}}}{16\pi ^2}\mathrm{ln}\frac{\mu }{\lambda X}.$$
(11)
Since $`X`$ is a field, it is not rescaled by $`\varphi `$, so that $`F_XXF_\varphi `$, and the AMSB prediction is modified. Models of this type are considered in Ref. .

As we explain in the next Section, in the models we construct $`F_X/XF_\varphi `$. Then, the soft masses at the weak scale can be obtained by calculating the AMSB soft masses in the full theory at the scale $`X`$ and running down to the weak scale. This can be seen simply by considering the component calculation of the soft masses. The fields that are integrated out at the GUT scale have SUSY masses of order $`X`$, and SUSY breaking mass-squared terms of order $`F_X`$. Because $`F_X/XF_\varphi `$, integrating out these fields does not give large loop matching corrections, and tree level matching with 1-loop running gives a good approximation to the low-energy masses.

## 3 The GUT Modulus

We now describe the mechanism for generating the GUT scale. We consider GUT models with a flat direction along which the GUT gauge group is spontaneously broken to the Standard-Model gauge group. We also require that AMSB give a negative mass-squared to this flat direction; we will discuss this point further below. If there are no other contributions to the potential for the flat direction, the theory will run away, presumably giving a noninteracting theory. However, the potential can be stabilized by Kähler terms of the form

$$\mathrm{\Delta }=d^4\theta \frac{c}{M_{\mathrm{Planck}}^2\varphi ^{}\varphi }(\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}\mathrm{\Sigma })^2,$$
(12)
where $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is a field with a nonzero VEV along the flat direction. This gives a contribution to the potential for $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$

$$\mathrm{\Delta }V(\mathrm{\Sigma })=\frac{c|F_\varphi |^2}{M_{\mathrm{Planck}}^2}(\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}\mathrm{\Sigma })^2.$$
(13)
For $`c<0`$ this can stabilize the VEV at

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }\left(\frac{M_{\mathrm{Planck}}^2m_\mathrm{\Sigma }^2}{c|F_\varphi |^2}\right)^{1/2}\frac{M_{\mathrm{Planck}}}{16\pi ^2},$$
(14)
where $`m_\mathrm{\Sigma }^2|F_\varphi |^2/(16\pi ^2)^2`$ is the AMSB soft mass of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. Note that this automatically generates a VEV at the GUT scale, assuming only that all couplings are order 1. The correct value of the GUT scale is generated from the Planck scale purely by supergravity effects!

AMSB dominates only if there are no large contact terms between the hidden and observable sector. This is natural if the hidden and observable sector are localized on different branes, and separated by a distance that is larger than the fundamental Planck scale. But if there are large extra dimensions, the size of higher-dimension operators such as Eq. (12) is set by the fundamental Planck scale, which is smaller than the 4-dimensional Planck scale. For one extra dimension, this relation is

$$M_{\mathrm{Planck}}^2=2\pi rM_5^3,$$
(15)
where $`r`$ is the radius of the extra dimension. The unwanted direct contact terms have the form

$$\mathrm{\Delta }=d^4\theta \frac{a_{jk}}{M_5^2}N^{}NQ_j^{}Q_k^{},$$
(16)
where $`N`$ is the hidden sector field that breaks SUSY via $`F_N0`$, and $`ae^{M_5r}`$. It is easy to see that for $`r10/M_5`$ we can suppress the unwanted operators and still obtain a reasonable value of the GUT scale via the mechanism above.

We now turn to the question of how the threshold at $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ affects the SUSY breaking masses. The relevant quantity is $`F_\mathrm{\Sigma }/\mathrm{\Sigma }`$, since this determines the size of the SUSY breaking corrections from loops involving GUT scale fields. The effective theory below the scale $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ contains a light Standard Model singlet field that parametrizes the motion along the flat direction. We label this field by $`X`$. (In the fundamental theory, the flat direction typically corresponds to a combination of fields, some of which have GUT charges.) In the effective theory, the potential for $`X`$ is given by

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{eff}}=d^4\theta \left[Z_X\left(\mu =(X^{}X)^{1/2}\right)X^{}X+\frac{c}{M_{\mathrm{Planck}}^2\varphi ^{}\varphi }(X^{}X)^2\right].$$
(17)
The wavefunction factor for $`X`$ is evaluated at the scale $`\mu =(X^{}X)^{1/2}`$ because $`X`$ has only irrelevant interactions below the scale $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ where the GUT fields are integrated out. $`F_X`$ is determined by expanding the first term

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{eff}}F_X^{}F_X+\left(F_X^{}\frac{XF_\varphi }{16\pi ^2}+\text{h.c.}\right),$$
(18)
which gives

$$\frac{F_X}{X}\frac{F_\varphi }{16\pi ^2}.$$
(19)
Since $`F_XXF_\varphi `$, we can neglect the contributions from $`X`$ as a messenger field compared to the contributions from AMSB. As discussed earlier, the soft masses can therefore be computed by running the AMSB masses at the GUT scale down to the weak scale.555The renormalization group running is also suppressed by a factor of $`1/(16\pi ^2)`$, but is enhanced by large logs. There are no large logs in the $`X`$ messenger contribution, since the parameters in Eq. (17) are not renormalized below the GUT scale.

The gauge contribution to the one-loop running of the scalar masses squared is always positive. However, the positive running contribution to the right-handed slepton masses is very small, so we are led to require that the scalar masses are positive at the GUT scale. The AMSB contribution to scalar masses has the schematic form

$$m^2\left(\frac{1}{16\pi ^2}\right)^2\left[+y^2(y^2g^2)\pm g^4\right]F_\varphi ^2,$$
(20)
where $`y`$ is a Yukawa coupling and $`g`$ is a gauge coupling. The last term is positive if the gauge group is asymptotically free, and negative if it is infrared free. For the first two generations, the Yukawa couplings are small.666One could attempt to build models in which the leptons have large Yukawa couplings with exotic fields above the GUT scale. We will not pursue this possibility here. We therefore require the slepton fields to be charged under an asymptotically free gauge group. The only possibilities are a gauged non-abelian horizontal symmetry, or the GUT group itself. However, the number of GUT fields is so large that a gauged horizontal symmetry will not be asymptotically free. We are therefore led to the requirement that the GUT group be asymptotically free. It is nontrivial to satisfy this requirement in a realistic GUT, but we will give an example in the next section that shows that it is possible.

If the GUT group is asymptotically free, then the $`g^4`$ contribution to the mass-squared of the GUT modulus is also positive, while our mechanism requires a negative value. We can obtain a negative mass-squared for the flat direction either from the $`y^2g^2`$ term in Eq. (20), or by charging some of the fields along the flat direction under an infrared-free gauge group (such as a $`U(1)`$ factor). Both of these effects are present in the model of Section 4, and give a negative mass-squared for the flat direction.

Since it is difficult to construct a realistic asymptotically free $`SU(5)`$ GUT model, larger groups are typically needed. Thus, the Standard Model fields will generically be charged under some broken diagonal generators of the GUT group. As discussed in  this can give rise to additional $`D`$-term contributions to the soft masses. These contributions can have important phenomenological consequences, but they are highly model dependent. We note that it may be possible to construct a model in which $`D`$-term contributions to slepton masses squared are sufficiently positive, so that the GUT group does not have to be asymptotically free. For this to work, all sleptons must have same-sign charges under the appropriate $`U(1)`$. We do not explore this possibilty here.

An important constraint on this scenario is that we must forbid couplings of the form

$$\mathrm{\Delta }=d^4\theta \frac{c_{jk}}{M_{\mathrm{Planck}}^2\varphi ^{}\varphi }(\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}\mathrm{\Sigma })(Q_j^{}Q_k^{}),$$
(21)
where the $`Q`$’s are MSSM matter fields. These terms cannot be forbidden by any symmetries, and there is no reason that they should conserve flavor. They give rise to contributions to scalar masses of order

$$\mathrm{\Delta }m_{jk}^2\frac{c_{jk}|F_\varphi |^2}{M_{\mathrm{Planck}}^2}\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}\mathrm{\Sigma }c_{jk}\left(\frac{1}{16\pi ^2}\right)^2|F_\varphi |^2,$$
(22)
where we have used $`\mathrm{\Sigma }M_{\mathrm{Planck}}/(16\pi ^2)`$. These contributions are precisely the size of the AMSB contributions, ruining the natural absence of FCNC’s. This fine-tuning is in a sense less severe than in traditional hidden-sector models, because we require *all* operators of the form Eq. (21) to be small, and not just a special subset of them (the flavor non-diagonal ones).

We can suppress the dangerous contributions without fine tuning by localizing the GUT modulus fields $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ and the visible sector fields $`Q`$ on different branes. Locality then guarantees the absence of terms such as Eq. (21). Gauge fields must couple to both $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ and $`Q`$, and must therefore live in the bulk. Doublet-triplet splitting typically requires that the Standard Model Higgs fields couple to $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ (the field that breaks the GUT group) as well as to $`Q`$. The Standard Model Higgs fields must therefore also live in the bulk. The simplest version of these ideas therefore allows the Standard Model gauge and Higgs fields to couple directly to the hidden sector where SUSY is broken. This gives soft terms that are large compared to the AMSB contributions.777Putting the gauginos and Higgs fields in the bulk and allowing direct couplings to the hidden sector results in ‘gaugino mediated SUSY breaking’ , which gives a natural and interesting scenario. However, we are interested in exploring the possibility that AMSB dominates.

The way out is to assume that the Standard Model gauge and Higgs fields are localized on a ‘thick brane’, with the matter fields $`Q`$ and GUT Higgs fields $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ localized at different positions within the thick brane. The hidden sector is assumed to be localized on a brane outside the thick brane. Now (approximate) locality suppresses all contact terms between the hidden and visible sector, while also suppressing the undesirable couplings among the visible sector fields. This structure arises in simple models with scalar domain walls .888For further discussion of SUSY models involving thick branes see for example Ref. .

We close this section by outlining a few alternatives for dynamically generating a non-decoupling threshold. The first is to generate $`m_\mathrm{\Sigma }^2<0`$ as above, but to stabilize $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ with superpotential terms of the form

$$\mathrm{\Delta }W\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }^n}{M_{\mathrm{Planck}}^{n3}}.$$

(Here we loosely treat $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ as a gauge-singlet for simplicity. In concrete models $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is typically replaced by a pair of fields which parameterize a $`D`$-flat direction.) Such a superpotential term leads to a scalar potential contribution of the form

$$\mathrm{\Delta }V\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }^{2(n1)}}{M_{\mathrm{Planck}}^{2(n3)}}+F_\mathrm{\Sigma }\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }^n}{M_{\mathrm{Planck}}^{n3}}.$$
(23)
\+ The second term in (23) is subdominant, and the first term would stabilize the VEV at

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }10^{15/(n2)}M_{\mathrm{Planck}}.$$

For example, for $`n=4`$ we obtain $`\mathrm{\Sigma }10^{11}\text{GeV}`$. Such superpotential terms may therefore be used to generate a threshold in models of intermediate scale unification. We also note that in order to rely on our basic mechanism of using Kähler potential terms to generate the GUT scale, superpotential terms of the form (23) should be forbidden by some symmetry for $`n9`$ or smaller, since otherwise they would lead to a VEV smaller than $`M_{\mathrm{GUT}}10^{16}\text{GeV}`$.

Finally, another way to generate a non-decoupling threshold is to use a strongly-coupled theory in which a runaway potential is generated dynamically, driving some field to infinity. This field may be stabilized by a positive AMSB scalar mass-squared. In this case, the resulting VEV is related to the SUSY breaking scale as well as the strong coupling scale of the theory.

## 4 The ‘5–3–1’ Model

We now construct a simple model realizing the ideas discussed in the previous section. The most important model building constraint arises from the requirement that the Standard Model fields are charged under an asymptotically free gauge group above the GUT scale. This requirement would be satisfied, for example, in the simple $`SU(5)`$ model with only a GUT modulus in addition to the MSSM fields. However, in any GUT model with an $`SU(5)`$ factor one needs to generate a GUT-scale mass for the Higgs triplets. This requires introducing a number of additional fields, and generically leads to loss of asymptotic freedom. A simple solution to the doublet-triplet splitting problem that maintains asymptotic freedom can be obtained by giving up unification in the strictest sense. We follow Ref.  and consider a model with an $`SU(5)\times SU(3)\times U(1)`$ gauge group that is spontaneously broken to a ‘diagonal’ standard-model subgroup. The predictions of unification are recovered if the gauge couplings of the $`SU(3)`$ and $`U(1)`$ factors are sufficiently larger than the $`SU(5)`$ gauge coupling.

The MSSM fields are charged only under the $`SU(5)`$ factor. In addition, the model contains the fields of Table 1. Note that the $`SU(5)`$ factor is asymptotically free, so AMSB masses for sleptons and squarks are all positive at the GUT scale. The superpotential is

$$W=\lambda _1\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Sigma }+\lambda _2\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}H\overline{T}+\lambda _3\mathrm{\Sigma }\overline{H}T.$$
(24)
This model has a one-parameter flat direction with

$$\mathrm{\Sigma },\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}\left(\begin{array}{ccc}1& 0& 0\\ 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& 1\\ 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right),$$
(25)
and all other fields vanishing. This breaks $`SU(5)\times SU(3)\times U(1)`$ down to the Standard Model gauge group, and this flat direction therefore acts as the GUT modulus in this model. The role of the other fields is as follows. $`H`$ and $`\overline{H}`$ transform as a $`5`$ and a $`\overline{5}`$ of $`SU(5)`$ and contain the Standard Model Higgs doublets. The fields $`T`$ and $`\overline{T}`$ are $`SU(3)`$ triplets that get masses with the triplet components of $`H`$ and $`\overline{H}`$ along the flat direction (the ‘missing partner’ mechanism). The field $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is required to give masses to unwanted light fields. In the absence of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ term, there are unwanted Nambu-Goldstone modes due to accidental global symmetries of the superpotential. With the couplings above, the only light fields are the Standard Model fields and a single flat direction that can be parameterized by $`\text{tr}(\mathrm{\Sigma }\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }})`$. (For $`\mathrm{\Sigma }=0`$ there are also flat directions with $`\mathrm{\Delta }0`$, but these do not affect the properties of vacua with $`\mathrm{\Sigma }0`$.)

Unification to $`5\%`$ accuracy requires the $`U(1)`$ gauge coupling to satisfy $`g_1^{}(M_{\mathrm{GUT}})0.8`$. (We normalize $`g_1^{}`$ so that $`D_\mu =_\mu ig_1^{}X`$, where $`X`$ is the $`U(1)`$ charge defined in Table 1.) For this value of $`g_1^{}`$, the $`U(1)`$ Landau pole is at $`30M_{\mathrm{GUT}}`$. This is uncomfortable, but plausibly large enough to trust perturbation theory at the GUT scale.

We now consider the effect of SUSY breaking on the GUT modulus flat direction. The $`g_5^4`$ contribution to the mass-squared is positive because $`SU(5)`$ is asymptotically free, but there are several negative contributions that can offset this. First, note that the $`g_1^4`$ contribution is negative, and can naturally be larger than the $`g_5^4`$ contribution because $`g_1`$ is required to be large for unification. (Even at the lower limit of $`g_1`$, the contributions are comparable.) The $`SU(3)`$ factor can also give a negative contribution due to a fortunate accident of this model: the one-loop beta function for $`SU(3)`$ vanishes, so there is no $`g_3^4`$ term, and the negative $`y^2g_3^2`$ term can naturally dominate the positive $`y^4`$ term if $`g_3`$ is larger than $`y`$. We conclude that one can obtain a negative mass-squared for the flat direction for a wide range of parameters.

The potential for the flat direction can be stabilized by the Kähler terms

$$\mathrm{\Delta }=d^4\theta \frac{c}{M_{\mathrm{Planck}}^2\varphi ^{}\varphi }(\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}\mathrm{\Sigma })^2+\frac{\overline{c}}{M_{\mathrm{Planck}}^2\varphi ^{}\varphi }(\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}^{}\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }})^2,$$
(26)
with $`c,\overline{c}1`$. As discussed in Section 3, for $`c,\overline{c}<0`$ this gives a stable minimum at

$$X\frac{1}{16\pi ^2}M_{\mathrm{Planck}}.$$
(27)
As discussed in the previous section, superpotential terms of the form $`(\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}\mathrm{\Sigma })^n/M_{\mathrm{Planck}}^{2n3}`$ must be forbidden for $`n<5`$. We note that one can impose an $`R`$ symmetry to forbid such operators. Such a symmetry can only be made anomaly free if the Standard Model fields transform non-trivially under the symmetry and some of the Standard Model Yukawa couplings are generated after spontaneous breakdown of the $`R`$ symmetry. This is plausible since the Standard Model Yukawas are small. One could also forbid dangerous operators by imposing discrete symmetries.

So far we have neglected $`D`$-term contributions. However, there are various effects that can give $`\mathrm{\Sigma }\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}`$. First, note that there is a nonzero AMSB contribution to $`m_\mathrm{\Sigma }^2m_{\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}}^2`$ due to the top-quark Yukawa coupling, and also if $`\lambda _2\lambda _3`$:

$$m_\mathrm{\Sigma }^2m_{\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}}^2g_1^2(\lambda _2^2\lambda _3^2)+\lambda _2^2y_t^2.$$
(28)
The large $`g_1^4`$ contributions cancel in the difference, so it is not unnatural to have $`m_\mathrm{\Sigma }^2m_{\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}}^2m_\mathrm{\Sigma }^2+m_{\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}}^2`$. Another contribution to the difference between $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ and $`\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}`$ arises from an asymmetry in the Kähler potential couplings $`c\overline{c}`$.

The only non-vanishing $`D`$ term in our model is associated with the broken $`U(1)`$ corresponding to the linear combination of the original $`U(1)`$ of the model and the hypercharge subgroup of $`SU(5)`$.999$`D`$-terms for other broken diagonal generators vanish due to the tracelessness of the group generators and the fact that the modulus VEV is proportional to the unit matrix under the corresponding subgroup. For example, for the $`SU(3)`$ generator $`T_8=diag(1,1,2)`$ one has $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}T_8\mathrm{\Sigma }=0`$, independently of the value of $`\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}`$. Thus, MSSM scalars receive additional contributions to their soft masses-squared proportional to their hypercharge. One should therefore check that these contributions do not drive the scalar masses negative. The largest dangerous contribution is the one associated with either the left-handed or the right-handed sleptons. It is given by

$$m_D^2=Y_{\mathrm{}}\frac{g_5^2}{g_1^2+g_5^2}\left[m_\mathrm{\Sigma }^2m_{\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}}^2+\frac{c\overline{c}}{c+\overline{c}}(m_\mathrm{\Sigma }^2+m_{\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}}^2)\right],$$
(29)
where $`Y_{\mathrm{}}`$ is the slepton hypercharge. If we require unification with $`5\%`$ accuracy, we find

$$\frac{m_D^2}{m_{\mathrm{AMSB}}^2}=\left(\frac{m_\mathrm{\Sigma }^2m_{\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}}^2}{m_\mathrm{\Sigma }^2+m_{\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}}^2}+\frac{c\overline{c}}{c+\overline{c}}\right)k,$$
(30)
where $`m_{\mathrm{AMSB}}^2`$ is the usual AMSB mass-squared and $`k1`$ for both right-handed and left-handed sleptons. We therefore conclude that in a large region of parameter space, our model predicts positive slepton masses at the GUT scale.

## 5 The $`\mu `$ Problem

No supersymmetric model is complete without a solution to the ‘$`\mu `$ problem.’ In this Section, we briefly consider several approaches in the present class of models.

The first is the mechanism proposed in Ref. . In this mechanism, one posits a singlet $`S`$ that gets its mass from the modulus $`X`$. If this singlet has superpotential couplings of the form

$$\mathrm{\Delta }W=\lambda SH_uH_d$$
(31)
this will generate a $`\mu `$ term and a $`B\mu `$ term of the correct size. As discussed in Ref. , there is no danger of generating a large $`B`$ term because there is no $`F`$-type VEV larger than $`F_\varphi /(16\pi ^2)`$.

This mechanism can be adapted to the present class of models. In order for the GUT modulus to give a GUT-scale mass to a singlet, we add the superpotential terms

$$\mathrm{\Delta }WN(\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}\mathrm{\Sigma }Y^2)+YS^2+S\overline{H}H+S^3,$$
(32)
where $`N,Y,S`$ are singlets. The first term forces $`Y0`$ along the flat direction, and the second term gives the singlet $`S`$ a mass as desired.

Another possibility for generating the $`\mu `$ term is to add a singlet $`S`$ with superpotential couplings at the weak scale

$$W=\lambda SH_uH_d+\frac{k}{3}S^3.$$
(33)
If $`S`$ gets a VEV of order the weak scale, this can generate a $`\mu `$ term. This model is appealing because it can relax the upper bound on the lightest Higgs mass.

We can obtain a realistic version of this model in the context of the ‘5–3–1’ model presented above. We assume that the superpotential at the GUT scale (see Eq. (24)) includes the additional terms

$$\mathrm{\Delta }W=\lambda S\overline{H}H+\frac{k}{3}S^3+\lambda ^{}S\overline{T}T.$$
(34)
It is easy to check that there is still a one-parameter flat direction with $`\mathrm{\Sigma },\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}`$ nonzero, and $`S=0`$, in the approximation that SUSY is unbroken. When SUSY is broken, the field $`S`$ will get a VEV at the weak scale if $`m_S^2<0`$ at the weak scale. ($`A`$ terms will also tend to destabilize $`S=0`$.) The $`S\overline{T}T`$ coupling gives rise to a contribution $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_S^2\lambda ^2g_3^2`$ at the GUT scale, and so $`m_S^2`$ can have any value at the GUT scale. Similar couplings can presumably be found in other GUT models. It appears that there is no obstacle in constructing a realistic model of this type.

Finally, one can generate a VEV for $`S`$ in (33), and hence, a $`\mu `$ term, following the mechanism of ref. . In this mechanism, $`S`$ is coupled to heavy fields of mass $`F_\varphi /\lambda ^{}`$, where $`\lambda ^{}`$ is a small number. As was shown in , such a mass is easily generated from AMSB, leading to a $`\mu `$ term and a $`B`$ term of the correct size.

## 6 Phenomenology

We now turn to the superpartner mass spectrum. Our analysis applies not just to the ‘5–3–1’ model of Section 4, but to general AMSB GUT models with the GUT scale determined by AMSB.

If the GUT gauge group is simple, the gaugino masses at the weak scale can be derived by noting that $`m_\lambda /g^2`$ is RG invariant to one loop, and using the GUT matching condition:

$$m_{\lambda i}(\mu )=g_i^2(\mu )\frac{\beta _{\mathrm{GUT}}}{g_{\mathrm{GUT}}^3}F_\varphi .$$
(35)
Here $`i=1,2,3`$ runs over the Standard Model group factors (with $`SU(5)`$ normalization for $`g_1`$) and

$$\beta _{\mathrm{GUT}}=\frac{dg_{\mathrm{GUT}}}{d\mathrm{ln}\mu }|_{\mu =M_{\mathrm{GUT}}}.$$
(36)
In the ‘5–3–1’ model the prediction for the gaugino masses is modified by the extra group factors. The matching conditions at the GUT scale are

$$\frac{m_{\lambda 3}}{g_3^2}=\frac{m_{\lambda 5}}{g_5^2}+\frac{m_{\lambda 3^{}}}{g_3^2},m_{\lambda 2}=m_{\lambda 5},\frac{m_{\lambda 1}}{g_1^2}=\frac{m_{\lambda 5}}{g_5^2}+\frac{m_{\lambda 1^{}}}{15g_1^2},$$
(37)
where $`g_3^{}`$ and $`g_1^{}`$ are the $`SU(3)`$ and $`U(1)`$ couplings in the ‘5–3–1’ model. We therefore recover the simple GUT prediction Eq. (35) for the $`SU(2)`$ gaugino mass, while

$`m_{\lambda 3}(\mu )`$ $`=`$ $`g_3^2(\mu )\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\beta _5(M_{\mathrm{GUT}})}{g_5^3(M_{\mathrm{GUT}})}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\beta _3^{}(M_{\mathrm{GUT}})}{g_{3}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}(M_{\mathrm{GUT}})}}\right]F_\varphi ,`$ (38)
$`m_{\lambda 1}(\mu )`$ $`=`$ $`g_1^2(\mu )\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\beta _5(M_{\mathrm{GUT}})}{g_5^3(M_{\mathrm{GUT}})}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\beta _1^{}(M_{\mathrm{GUT}})}{15g_{1}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}(M_{\mathrm{GUT}})}}\right]F_\varphi .`$ (39)
In the specific model presented in Section 4, $`\beta _3^{}=0`$ (at one loop) and so the gluino mass is also given by the simple GUT prediction.

We now consider scalars. We first assume that $`D`$-term contributions to the scalar masses are negligible. In the ‘5–3–1’ model, this is the case for $`c\overline{c}1`$, and $`\lambda _2\lambda _31`$ as discussed in Section 4. Scalar masses then unify into GUT representations at the GUT scale. This is of course familiar in traditional SUGRA models, but does not happen in minimal anomaly mediation, or in the modifications discussed in Refs. .

For the first two generations, and for third-generation $`\overline{\mathrm{𝟓}}`$ fields for small $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$, one can neglect Yukawa couplings.101010It is possible that these fields have large Yukawa couplings with superheavy fields above the GUT scale. This possibility is unmotivated, and is difficult to reconcile with the requirement that the GUT group is asymptotically free. The AMSB soft mass at the GUT scale is then given by the gauge contribution

$$m_r^2(M_{\mathrm{GUT}})=\frac{C_{\mathrm{GUT},r}}{8\pi ^2}g_{\mathrm{GUT}}\beta _{\mathrm{GUT}}|F_\varphi |^2,$$
(40)
where $`C_{\mathrm{GUT},r}`$ is the Casimir of the GUT representation of the field. (Note that $`m_r^2(M_{\mathrm{GUT}})>0`$ if the GUT group is asymptotically free.) The RG equations can then be used to compute the value at the weak scale. The result is

$$m_r^2(\mu )=m_r^2(M_{\mathrm{GUT}})+\underset{i=1}{\overset{3}{}}\frac{2C_{i,r}}{b_i}\left(\frac{m_{\lambda i}}{g_i^2}\right)^2\left[g_{\mathrm{GUT}}^4g_i^4(\mu )\right],$$
(41)
where

$$\frac{dg_i}{d\mathrm{ln}\mu }=\frac{b_ig_i^3}{16\pi ^2},$$
(42)
and $`m_{\lambda i}/g_i^2`$ is an RG invariant at one loop (given by Eq. (35) for a true GUT, or Eqs. (38) and (39) in the ‘5–3–1’ model). Note that the running down to the weak scale gives a positive contribution to the slepton masses, but the right-handed sleptons get a contribution only from $`U(1)_Y`$, and this by itself is not large enough to allow the slepton masses at the GUT scale to be significantly negative. This motivates our choice of an asymtotically free GUT group.

For the third generation, the top Yukawa coupling affects the predictions. (For large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ we must consider the bottom and tau Yukawa couplings as well.) The third-generation scalar masses at the GUT scale are given by

$$m_3^2+y_t^4y_t^2g_{\mathrm{GUT}}^2+y_t^2\lambda ^2,$$
(43)
where $`\lambda `$ is a cubic coupling involving the GUT Higgs fields. Such couplings are expected generically to be present in order to explain doublet-triplet splitting. We see that there is a model-dependent positive contribution to the third-generation scalar masses, so the only model-independent prediction is a lower bound. The value of $`y_t`$ is also senstive to $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. Additionally, the $`\mu `$ term is important for the mass eigenstates of the stops (and the sbottoms and staus for large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$) because AMSB gives large $`A`$ terms. We have checked that for small $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$, neglecting the $`y_t^2\lambda ^2`$ contribution at the GUT scale gives third-generation squark masses close to that of the first two generations. We conclude that there is no significant model-independent constraint on the third generation scalar masses, other than the fact that scalar masses of members of the same GUT multiplet unify at the GUT scale.

We now turn to the generic case, in which $`D`$-terms cannot be neglected. Different scalars then recieve model dependent contributions to their masses-squared at the GUT scale. For the ‘5–3–1’ model, these contributions are proportional to the hypercharge of the relevant scalar. Eqn. (40) then contains an additional term, given by eqn. (29). In this case, we cannot obtain an analytic expression for the soft masses at low energies. However, as explained in Section 4, in a large region of parameter space, the $`D`$-term contribution does not modify the masses significantly, so that the scalar masses-squared at low energies are still positive.

## 7 Conclusions

We studied grand unified theories (GUT’s) in which supersymmetry breaking in the visible sector is communicated by anomaly mediation. We showed that if the GUT scale is determined by the vacuum expectation value of a modulus field, then there is a simple and natural mechanism that fixes the GUT scale at the value

$$M_{\mathrm{GUT}}\frac{M_{\mathrm{Planck}}}{16\pi ^2},$$
(44)
independently of the couplings of the theory. Because the GUT threshold is non-supersymmetric in such models, superpartner masses are not on the anomaly-mediated trajectory below the GUT scale. This can be used to correct the main phenomenological problem of ‘minimal’ anomaly-mediated supersymmetry breaking, that is, the tachyonic sleptons. We showed that if the GUT group is asymptotically free one can obtain a viable superpartner mass spectrum at low energies. Also, the resulting superpartner spectrum is very different from that of previously studied AMSB models. In particular, gaugino and scalar masses can unify, subject to corrections from other group factors (for gaugino masses) and $`D`$ terms (for scalar masses).

We demonstrated these ideas by constructing a GUT model which includes a solution to the doublet-triplet splitting problem. The model we consider has some unappealing features, notably a Landau pole not far from the GUT scale for a $`U(1)`$ factor. However, we believe it is very interesting that the physics of unification and supersymmetry breaking is so closely intertwined in this class of models. On the one hand, the GUT scale is determined dynamically from the Planck scale by supersymmetry-breaking effects. On the other hand, the GUT physics modifies superpartner masses and leads to a viable low energy theory. We believe that these ideas are worthy of further investigation.

## 8 Acknowledgments

Y. Shirman thanks Takeo Moroi for useful discussions, and the Aspen Center for Physics for hospitality during the early stages of this project. M. Luty and Y. Shirman also thank the Santa Barbara ITP for hospitality during the early stages of this project. The work of M. Luty and E. Pontón was supported by NSF grant #PHY-98-02551. The work of Z. Chacko was supported by DOE contract DE-FG03-96-ER40956. The work of Y. Shirman was supported by NSF grant #PHY-9802484. The work of Y. Shadmi was supported by DOE grants #DF-FC02-94ER40818, and #DE-FC02-91ER40671.