Supersymmetry and electroweak breaking from extra dimensions at the TeV scale - art. no. 095008

We analyze some features of the role that extra dimensions, of radius R in the TeV-1 range, can play in the soft breaking of supersymmetry and the spo ntaneous breaking of electroweak symmetry. We use a minimal model where the gauge and Higgs boson sector of the MSSM are living in the bulk of five di mensions and the chiral multiplets in a four-dimensional boundary. Supersym metry is broken In the bulk by the Scherk-Schwarz mechanism and transmitted to the boundary by radiative corrections. The particle spectrum is complet ely predicted as a function of a unique R charge. The massless sector corre sponds to the pure standard model and electroweak symmetry is radiatively b roken with a light Higgs boson weighing less than or similar to 110 GeV. Th e mu problem is solved and Higgsinos, gauginos, and heavy Higgs bosons acqu ire masses similar to 1/R. Chiral sfermions acquire radiative squared-masse s similar to alpha(i)/R-2. The effective potential is explicitly computed i n the bulk of extra dimensions and some cosmological consequences can be im mediately drawn from it. Gauge coupling running and unification are studied in the presence of Scherk-Schwarz supersymmetry breaking. The unification is similar to that in the supersymmetric theory. [S0556-2821(99)04621-4].