Cosmological constant in SUGRA models with degenerate vacua

Abstract

The extrapolation of couplings up to the Planck scale within the standard model (SM) indicates that the Higgs effective potential can have two almost degenerate vacua, which were predicted by the multiple point principle (MPP). The application of the MPP to (N=1) supergravity (SUGRA) implies that the SUGRA scalar potential of the hidden sector possesses at least two exactly degenerate minima. The first minimum is associated with the physical phase in which we live. In the second supersymmetric (SUSY) Minkowski vacuum, the local SUSY may be broken dynamically, inducing a tiny vacuum energy density. In this paper, we consider the no-scale-inspired SUGRA model in which the MPP conditions are fulfilled without any extra fine-tuning at the tree-level. Assuming that at high energies, the couplings in both phases are identical, one can estimate the dark energy density in these vacua. Using the two-loop renormalization group (RG) equations, we find that the measured value of the cosmological constant can be reproduced if the SUSY breaking scale MS in the physical phase is of the order of 100 TeV. The scenario with the Planck scale SUSY breaking is also discussed