Explicitly broken supersymmetry with exactly massless moduli

Abstract

The AdS/CFT correspondence is applied to an analogue of the little hierarchy problem in three-dimensional supersymmetric theories. The bulk is governed by a super-gravity theory in which a U(1) × U(1) R-symmetry is gauged by Chern-Simons fields. The bulk theory is deformed by a boundary term quadratic in the gauge fields. It breaks SUSY completely and sources an exactly marginal operator in the dual CFT. SUSY breaking is communicated by gauge interactions to bulk scalar fields and their spinor superpartners. The bulk-to-boundary propagator of the Chern-Simons fields is a total derivative with respect to the bulk coordinates. Integration by parts and the Ward identity permit evaluation of SUSY breaking effects to all orders in the strength of the deformation. The R-charges of scalars and spinors differ so large SUSY breaking mass shifts are generated. Masses of R-neutral particles such as scalar moduli are not shifted to any order in the deformation strength, despite the fact that they may couple to R-charged fields running in loops. We also obtain a universal deformation formula for correlation functions under an exactly marginal deformation by a product of holomorphic and anti-holomorphic U(1) currents.