Emil Nissimov
A new venue of spontaneous supersymmetry breaking in supergravity
We present a qualitatively new mechanism for dynamical spontaneous breakdown of supersymmetry. Specifically, we construct a modified formulation of standard minimal N=1 supergravity. The modification is based on an idea worked out in detail in previous publications by some of us, where we proposed a new formulation of (non-supersymmetric) gravity theories employing an alternative volume form (volume element, or generally-covariant integration measure) in the pertinent Lagrangian action, defined in terms of auxiliary (pure-gauge) fields instead of the standard Riemannian metric volume form. Invariance under supersymmetry of the new modified N=1 supergravity action is preserved due to the addition of an appropriate compensating antisymmetric tensor gauge field. This new formalism naturally triggers the appearance of a dynamically generated cosmological constant as an arbitrary integration constant which signifies a spontaneous (dynamical) breaking of supersymmetry. Furthermore, applying the same formalism to anti-de Sitter supergravity allows us to appropriately choose the above mentioned arbitrary integration constant so as to obtain simultaneously a very small effective observable cosmological constant as well as a large gravitino mass as required by modern cosmological scenarios for slowly expanding universe of today.