arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to John Terning.
These lectures contain a pedagogical review of non-perturbative results from holomorphy and Seiberg duality with applications to dynamical SUSY breaking. Background material on anomalies, instantons, unitarity bounds from superconformal symmetry, and gauge mediation are also included.
We present a 5D gauge theory in warped space based on a bulk SU(2)_L x SU(2)_R x U(1)_(B-L) gauge group where the gauge symmetry is broken by boundary conditions. The symmetry breaking pattern and the mass spectrum resembles that in the standard model (SM). To leading order in the warp factor the rho parameter and the coupling of the Z (or equivalently the S-parameter) are as in the SM, while corrections are expected at the level of a percent. From the AdS/CFT point of view the model presented here can be viewed as the AdS dual of a (walking) technicolor-like theory, in the sense that it is the presence of the IR brane itself that breaks electroweak symmetry, and not a localized Higgs on the IR brane (which should be interpreted as a composite Higgs model). This model predicts the lightest W, Z and photon resonances to be at around 1.2 TeV, and no fundamental (or composite) Higgs particles.
We construct a little Higgs model using a simple global symmetry group SU(9) spontaneously broken to SU(8). The electroweak interactions are extended to SU(3)xU(1) and embedded in SU(9). At the electroweak scale, our model is a two Higgs-doublet model. At the TeV scale, there are additional states, which are responsible for the cancellation of one loop quadratic divergences. We compute the effects of heavy states on the precision electroweak observables and find that the lower bounds on the masses of heavy gauge bosons and fermions are between 1 and 2 TeV.
We show that photons with energies above the GZK cutoff can reach us from very distant sources if they mix with light axions in extragalactic magnetic fields. The effect which enables this is the conversion of photons into axions, which are sufficiently weakly coupled to travel large distances unimpeded. These axions then convert back into high energy photons close to the Earth. We show that photon-axion mixing facilitates the survival of super-GZK photons most efficiently with a photon-axion coupling scale of order 10^11 GeV, which is in the same range as the scale for the photon-axion mixing explanation for the dimming of supernovae without cosmic acceleration. We discuss possible observational consequences of this effect.
We consider the two-brane Randall-Sundrum (RS) model with bulk gauge fields. We carefully match the bulk theory to a 4D low-energy effective Lagrangian. In addition to the four-fermion operators induced by KK exchange we find that large negative S and T parameters are induced in the effective theory. This is a tree-level effect and is a consequence of the shapes of the W and Z wave functions in the bulk. Such effects are generic in extra dimensional theories where the standard model (SM) gauge bosons have non-uniform wave functions along the extra dimension. The corrections to precision electroweak observables in the RS model are mostly dominated by S. We fit the parameters of the RS model to the experimental data and find somewhat stronger bounds than previously obtained; however, the standard model bound on the Higgs mass from precision measurements can only be slightly relaxed in this theory.
It has recently been suggested that, in a large N limit, a particular four dimensional gauge theory is indistinguishable from the six dimensional CFT with (0,2) supersymmetry compactified on a torus. We give further evidence for this correspondence by studying the Seiberg-Witten curve for the "deconstructed" theory and demonstrating that along the reduced Coulomb branch of moduli space (on the intersection of the Higgs and Coulomb branches) it describes the low energy physics on a stack of M5-branes on a torus, which is the (0,2) theory on a torus as claimed. The M-theory construction helps to clarify the enhancement of supersymmetry in the deconstructed theory at low energies, and demonstrates its stability to radiative and instanton corrections. We demonstrate the role of the theta vacuum in the deconstructed theory. We point out that by varying the theta parameters and gauge couplings in the deconstructed theory, the complex structure of the torus can be chosen arbitrarily, and the torus is not metrically S^1 x S^1 in general.
We consider a recent proposal by Dimopoulos and Kaplan to embed the electroweak SU(2)_L X U(1)_Y into a larger group SU(3)_W X SU(2) X U(1) at a scale above a TeV. This idea is motivated by the prediction for the weak mixing angle sin^2 theta_W = 1/4, which naturally appears in these models so long as the gauge couplings of the high energy SU(2) and U(1) groups are moderately large. The extended gauge dynamics results in new effective operators that contribute to four-fermion interactions and Z pole observables. We calculate the corrections to these electroweak precision observables and carry out a global fit of the new physics to the data. For SU(2) and U(1) gauge couplings larger than 1, we find that the 95% C.L. lower bound on the matching (heavy gauge boson mass) scale is 11 TeV. We comment on the fine-tuning of the high energy gauge couplings needed to allow matching scales above our bounds. The remnants of SU(3)_W breaking include multi-TeV SU(2)_L doublets with electric charge (+-2,+-1). The lightest charged gauge boson is stable, leading to cosmological difficulties.
I review the calculation of the glueball spectrum in non-supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory (in 3 and 4 dimensions) using the conjectured duality between supergravity and large N gauge theories. The glueball masses are obtained by solving the supergravity wave equations in a black hole geometry. The masses obtained this way are in unexpectedly good agreement with the available lattice data, and are much better than strong-coupling expansion results. I also show how to use a modified version of the duality to calculate the glueball mass spectrum with some of the Kaluza-Klein states of the supergravity theory decoupled from the spectrum.
We have recently proposed a mechanism of photon-axion oscillations as a way of rendering supernovae dimmer without cosmic acceleration. Subsequently, it has been argued that the intergalactic plasma may interfere adversely with this mechanism by rendering the oscillations energy dependent. Here we show that this energy dependence is extremely sensitive to the precise value of the free electron density in the Universe. Decreasing the electron density by only a factor of 4 is already sufficient to bring the energy dependence within the experimental bounds. Models of the intergalactic medium show that for redshifts z<1 about 97% of the total volume of space is filled with regions of density significantly lower than the average density. From these models we estimate that the average electron density in most of space is lower by at least a factor of 15 compared to the estimate based on one half of all baryons being uniformly distributed and ionized. Therefore the energy dependence of the photon-axion oscillations is consistent with experiment, and the oscillation model remains a viable alternative to the accelerating Universe for explaining the supernova observations. Furthermore, the electron density does give rise to a sufficiently large plasma frequency which cuts off the photon-axion mixing above microwave frequencies, shielding the cosmic microwave photons from axion conversions and significantly relaxing the lower bounds on the axion mass implied by the oscillation model.
We present a simple model where photons propagating in extra-galactic magnetic fields can oscillate into very light axions. The oscillations may convert some of the photons departing a distant supernova into axions, making the supernova appear dimmer and hence more distant than it really is. Averaging over different configurations of the magnetic field we find that the dimming saturates at about 1/3 of the light from the supernovae at very large redshifts. This results in a luminosity-distance vs. redshift curve almost indistinguishable from that produced by the accelerating Universe, if the axion mass and coupling scale are m ~ 10^-16 eV, M ~ 4 10^11 GeV. This phenomenon may be an alternative to the accelerating Universe for explaining supernova observations.
We examine new classes of GUT models where the GUT gauge group is broken by a 4D analogue of the Scherk-Schwarz mechanism. These models are inspired by ``deconstructed'' 5D Scherk-Schwarz orbifold models. However, no fine tuning of parameters or assumption of higher dimensional Lorentz invariance is necessary, and the number of lattice sites can be as low as just two. These models provide simple ways to solve the doublet-triplet splitting problem, changes proton decay predictions, and may provide insight into the structure of the CKM matrix. Since the number of fields in these models is finite, the corrections to the unification of gauge couplings can be reliably calculated, and as expected result only in threshold corrections to the differential running of the couplings. Our analysis also suggests new 4D models which can enjoy the benefits of orbifold models but cannot be obtained by deconstruction of a 5D model.
We study the long distance behaviour of brane theories with quasi-localized gravity. The 5D effective theory at large scales follows from a holographic renormalization group flow. As intuitively expected, the graviton is effectively four dimensional at intermediate scales and becomes five dimensional at large scales. However in the holographic effective theory the essentially 4D radion dominates at long distances and gives rise to scalar anti-gravity. The holographic description shows that at large distances the GRS model is equivalent to the model recently proposed by Dvali, Gabadadze and Porrati (DGP), where a tensionless brane is embedded into 5D Minkowski space, with an additional induced 4D Einstein-Hilbert term on the brane. In the holographic description the radion of the GRS model is automatically localized on the tensionless brane, and provides the ghost-like field necessary to cancel the extra graviton polarization of the DGP model. Thus, there is a holographic duality between these theories. This analysis provides physical insight into how the GRS model works at intermediate scales; in particular it sheds light on the size of the width of the graviton resonance, and also demonstrates how the holographic RG can be used as a practical tool for calculations.
We construct models in which electroweak symmetry is spontaneously broken by supersymmetric strong dynamics at the TeV scale. The order parameter is a composite of scalars, and the longitudinal components of the W and Z are strongly-coupled bound states of scalars. The usual phenomenological problems of dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking are absent: the sign of the S parameter unconstrained in strongly interacting SUSY theories, and fermion masses are generated without flavor-changing neutral currents or large corrections to the rho parameter. The lightest neutral Higgs scalar can be heavier than M_Z without radiative corrections from standard-model fields. All the mass scales in the model can be naturally related in low-scale models of supersymmetry breaking. The mu problem can also be solved naturally, and the model can incorporate perturbative unification of standard-model gauge couplings with intermediate thresholds.
We analyze the cosmology of the Randall-Sundrum model and that of compact brane models in general in the presence of a radius stabilization mechanism. We find that the expansion of our universe is generically in agreement with the expected effective four dimensional description. The constraint (which is responsible for the appearance of non-conventional cosmologies in these models) that must be imposed on the matter densities on the two branes in the theory without a stabilized radius is a consequence of requiring a static solution even in the absence of stabilization. Such constraints disappear in the presence of a stablizing potential, and the ordinary FRW (Friedmann-Robertson-Walker) equations are reproduced, with the expansion driven by the sum of the physical values of the energy densities on the two branes and in the bulk. For the case of the Randall-Sundrum model we examine the kinematics of the radion field, and find that corrections to the standard FRW equations are small for temperatures below the weak scale. We find that the radion field has renormalizable and unsuppressed couplings to Standard Model particles after electroweak symmetry breaking. These couplings may have important implications for collider searches. We comment on the possibility that matter off the TeV brane could serve as a dark matter candidate.
We examine the cosmology of the two recently proposed scenarios for a five dimensional universe with localized gravity. We find that the scenario with a non-compact fifth dimension is potentially viable, while the scenario which might solve the hierarchy problem predicts a contracting universe, leading to a variety of cosmological problems.
We examine a class of gauge theories obtained by projecting out certain fields from an N=4 supersymmetric SU(N) gauge theory. These theories are non-supersymmetric and in the large N limit are known to be conformal. Recently it was proposed that the hierarchy problem could be solved by embedding the standard model in a theory of this kind with finite N. In order to check this claim one must find the conformal points of the theory. To do this we calculate the one-loop beta functions for the Yukawa and quartic scalar couplings. We find that with the beta functions set to zero the one-loop quadratic divergences are not canceled at sub-leading order in N; thus the hierarchy between the weak scale and the Planck scale is not stabilized unless N is of the order 10^28 or larger. We also find that at sub-leading orders in N renormalization induces new interactions, which were not present in the original Lagrangian.
We review recent work on realistic models that break supersymmetry dynamically and give rise to composite quarks and leptons, all in a single sector. These models have a completely natural suppression of flavor-changing neutral currents, and the hierarchy of Yukawa couplings is explained by the dimensionality of composite states. The generic signatures are unification of scalar masses with different quantum numbers at the compositeness scale, and lighter gaugino, Higgsino, and third-generation sfermion masses.
We review the calculation of the spectrum of glueball masses in non-supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory using the conjectured duality between supergravity and large N gauge theories. The glueball masses are obtained by solving the supergravity wave equations in a black hole geometry. The glueball masses found this way are in unexpected agreement with the available lattice data. We also show how to use a modified version of the duality based on rotating branes to calculate the glueball mass spectrum with some of the Kaluza-Klein states of the supergravity theory decoupled from the spectrum.