Building a Nest at Tree Level: Classical Metastability and Non-Trivial Vacuum Structure in Supersymmetric Field Theories

Abstract

It is becoming increasingly clear that metastable vacua may play a prominent role in supersymmetry-breaking. To date, however, this idea has been realized only in models where non-perturbative dynamics complicates the analysis of metastability. In this paper, we present a simple construction in which metastable vacua occur classically, i.e., at tree-level, and in which supersymmetry-breaking is sourced by both D-terms and F-terms. All relevant dynamics is perturbative, and hence calculations of vacuum energies and lifetimes can be performed explicitly. Moreover, we find that our construction can even give rise to multiple non-supersymmetric vacua which are degenerate. The non-trivial vacuum structure of such models therefore suggests that they can provide a rich arena for future studies of vacuum metastability in supersymmetric field theories. Our results may also have important consequences for Z' phenomenology and the string landscape.