Self-dual tensors and partial supersymmetry breaking in five dimensions

Abstract

Abstract: We study spontaneous supersymmetry breaking of five-dimensional supergravity theories from sixteen to eight supercharges in Minkowski vacua. This N = 4→N = 2 breaking is induced by Abelian gaugings that require the introduction of self-dual tensor fields accompanying some of the vectors in the gravity and vector multiplets. These tensor fields have first-order kinetic terms and become massive by a Stückelberg-like mechanism. We identify the general class of N = 2 vacua and show how the N = 4 spectrum splits into massless and massive N = 2 multiplets. In particular, we find a massive gravitino multiplet, with two complex massive tensors, and a number of massive tensor multiplets and hypermultiplets. We determine the resulting N = 2 effective action for the massless multiplets obtained by integrating out massive fields. We show that the metric and Chern-Simons terms of the vectors are corrected at one-loop by massive tensors as well as spin-1/2 and spin-3/2 fermions. These contributions are independent of the supersymmetry-breaking scale and thus have to be included at arbitrarily low energies.