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Flavor mediation delivers natural SUSY

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Abstract

If supersymmetry (SUSY) solves the hierarchy problem, then naturalness considerations coupled with recent LHC bounds require non-trivial superpartner flavor structures. Such “Natural SUSY” models exhibit a large mass hierarchy between scalars of the third and first two generations as well as degeneracy (or alignment) among the first two generations. In this work, we show how this specific beyond the standard model (SM) flavor structure can be tied directly to SM flavor via “Flavor Mediation”. The SM contains an anomaly-free SU(3) flavor symmetry, broken only by Yukawa couplings. By gauging this flavor symmetry in addition to SM gauge symmetries, we can mediate SUSY breaking via (Higgsed) gauge mediation. This automatically delivers a natural SUSY spectrum. Third-generation scalar masses are suppressed due to the dominant breaking of the flavor gauge symmetry in the top direction. More subtly, the first-two-generation scalars remain highly degenerate due to a custodial U(2) symmetry, where the SU(2) factor arises because SU(3) is rank two. This custodial symmetry is broken only at order (m c /m t )2. SUSY gauge coupling unification predictions are preserved, since no new charged matter is introduced, the SM gauge structure is unaltered, and the flavor symmetry treats all matter multiplets equally. Moreover, the uniqueness of the anomaly-free SU(3) flavor group makes possible a number of concrete predictions for the superpartner spectrum.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, 08540, USA

    Nathaniel Craig

  2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA

    Nathaniel Craig

  3. Center for Theoretical Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA

    Matthew McCullough & Jesse Thaler

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  1. Nathaniel Craig
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  2. Matthew McCullough
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  3. Jesse Thaler
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Correspondence to Matthew McCullough.

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Craig, N., McCullough, M. & Thaler, J. Flavor mediation delivers natural SUSY. J. High Energ. Phys. 2012, 46 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP06(2012)046

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