Paper detail

A new view on vacuum stability in the MSSM

A consistent theoretical description of physics at high energies requires an assessment of vacuum stability in either the Standard Model or any extension of it. Especially supersymmetric extensions allow for several vacua and the choice of the desired electroweak one gives strong constraints on the parameter space. As the general parameter space in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model is huge, any severe constraint on it unrelated to direct phenomenological observations enhances the predictability of the model. We perform an updated analysis of possible charge and color breaking minima without relying on fixed directions in field space that minimize certain terms in the potential (known as "D-flat" directions). Concerning the cosmological stability of false vacua, we argue that there are always directions in configuration space which lead to very short-lived vacua and therefore such exclusions are strict. In addition to existing strong constraints on the parameter space, we find even stronger constraints extending the field space compared to previous analyses and combine those constraints with predictions for the light CP-even Higgs mass in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. Low masses for supersymmetric partners are excluded from vacuum stability in combination with the 125 GeV Higgs and the allowed parameter space opens at a few TeV.