Aspects of supersymmetric field theories in four and six dimensions

Abstract

Supersymmetry is an important concept in modern high energy physics. It has found many applications in theoretical considerations of supersymmetric gauge theories as well as in phenomenological approaches to physics beyond the Standard Model. In this report we discuss some recent progress in supersymmetric eld theories in four and six dimensions. After introducing basic ideas and properties of supersymmetry we review the concept of scattering amplitudes in maximally supersymmetric theories in four dimensions before constructing a related framework in six dimensions. Here, the spinor helicity formalism and on-shell superspace were recently developed for six-dimensional gauge theories with (1,1) supersymmetry. We combine these two techniques with (generalised) unitarity, which is a powerful technique to calculate scattering amplitudes in any massless theory. As an application we calculate one-loop superamplitudes with four and ve external particles in the (1,1) theory and perform several consistency checks on our results. Within the area of phenomenological applications of supersymmetric gauge theories, we brie y review basic properties of supersymmetry breaking and gauge mediation in four dimensions. An important recent development has been the concept of theories with broken supersymmetry and metastable vacua. By using the advances of Seiberg duality, we examine a metastable N = 1 Macroscopic SO(N) SQCD model of Intriligator, Seiberg and Shih (ISS). We introduce various baryon and meson deformations, including multitrace operators. In this setup, direct fundamental messengers and the symmetric pseudomodulus messenger mediate supersymmetry breaking to a minimal supersymmetric Standard Model. We compute gaugino and sfermion masses and compare them for each deformation type. We also explore reducing the rank of the magnetic