Secteur sombre | EPFL Graph Search

En physique des particules, le secteur sombre (ou secteur caché) est un ensemble de particules et de champs quantiques hypothétiques visant à expliquer le défaut de masse de l'Univers et son accélération. Des particules telles que l'axion, le photon sombre ou le neutrino stérile n'interagiraient avec celles du modèle standard que par l'interaction faible ou la gravitation. De nouveaux bosons, dits bosons sombres, seraient les vecteurs de cette interaction. Notes et références Voir aussi Articles connexes

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Liens externes * Catégorie:Physique des particules

Tackling the Supersymmetric Flavour Problem in String Models

Christopher John Andrey

In this work we address one of the phenomenological issues of beyond the Standard Model scenarios which embed Supersymmetry, namely the Supersymmetric Flavour Problem, in the context of String Theory. Indeed, the addition of new interactions to the Standard Model generically spoils its flavour structure which is one of its major achievements since it for example leads to a very elegant understanding of the absence of flavour changing neutral currents in the leptonic sector and of the stability of the proton, thanks to accidental symmetries. We focus on a subset of the phenomenologically dangerous operators, namely the soft scalar masses. One way out of the Supersymmetric Flavour Problem is to geographically separate the observable and hidden sectors along a fifth dimension, gravity being the only interaction propagating in the bulk. In such scenarios, the soft scalar masses are vanishing at the classical level since there is no direct contact term between the observable and hidden multiplets and tend to be universal at the loop-level. However such setups hardly ever come about in String Theory, which is one of the most promising candidates of quantum gravity. In order to make contact with the five-dimensional picture, we focus on the prototypical case of the E8 × E8 Heterotic M-Theory which, in a certain regime, effectively looks five-dimensional and embeds matter fields on two end-of-the-world branes. In these scenarios, not only gravity but also vector multiplets propagate in the five-dimensional bulk, effectively spoiling the sequestered picture. However, since the contact terms responsible for the appearance of soft scalar masses arise due to the exchange of heavy vectors, they do enjoy a current-current structure which can be exploited to inhibit the emergence of soft scalar masses by postulating a global symmetry in the hidden sector. In order to assess the possibility of realising such a mechanism, we first study the full dependence of the Kähler potential on both the moduli and the matter fields in the case of orbifold and Calabi-Yau compactifications. We then determine whether an effective sequestering may be achieved thanks to a global symmetry and argue that whereas for orbifold models our strategy can naturally be put at work, it can only be implemented in a subset of Calabi-Yau models.

EPFL2011

Mildly sequestered supergravity models and their realization in string theory

Christopher John Andrey, Claudio Scrucca

We elaborate on the idea that five-dimensional models where sequestering is spoiled due to contact interactions induced by vector multiplets may still be mildly sequestered if a global version of the gauge symmetry associated to the latter survives in the hidden sector. Interestingly, it has been argued that although in such a situation non-trivial current current contact interactions are induced by the heavy vector modes, these do not induce soft scalar masses, as a consequence of the global symmetry. We perform a detailed study of how this hybrid mechanism can be implemented in supergravity and string models, focusing on the prototypical case of heterotic M-theory orbifolds. We emphasize that in general the mechanism works only up to subleading effects suppressed by the ratio between the global symmetry breaking scale in the hidden sector and the vector mass scale or the Planck scale. We also argue that this mild sequestering mechanism allows to rehabilitate the scenario of dilaton domination of supersymmetry breaking, which is incompatible with dilaton stabilization in its original version, by exploiting the fact that hidden brane fields do contribute to the cosmological constant but not to soft terms, thanks to the global symmetry. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

2010

Sequestering by global symmetries in Calabi–Yau string models

Christopher John Andrey, Claudio Scrucca

We study the possibility of realizing an effective sequestering between visible and hidden sectors in generic heterotic string models, generalizing previous work on orbifold constructions to smooth Calabi-Yau compactifications. In these theories, genuine sequestering is spoiled by interactions mixing chiral multiplets of the two sectors in the effective Kahler potential. These effective interactions however have a specific current-current-like structure and can be interpreted from an M-theory viewpoint as coming from the exchange of heavy vector multiplets. One may then attempt to inhibit the emergence of generic soft scalar masses in the visible sector by postulating a suitable global symmetry in the dynamics of the hidden sector. This mechanism is however not straightforward to implement, because the structure of the effective contact terms and the possible global symmetries is a priori model dependent. To assess whether there is any robust and generic option, we study the full dependence of the Kahler potential on the moduli and the matter fields. This is well known for orbifold models, where it always leads to a symmetric scalar manifold, but much less understood for Calabi-Yau models, where it generically leads to a non-symmetric scalar manifold. We then examine the possibility of an effective sequestering by global symmetries, and argue that whereas for orbifold models this can be put at work rather naturally, for Calabi-Yau models it can only be implemented in rather peculiar circumstances.

Elsevier2011

Tackling the Supersymmetric Flavour Problem in String Models

Christopher John Andrey

EPFL2011