CP violation and the scale of supersymmetry breaking - art. no. 116005

Supersymmetric models with a high supersymmetry breaking scale give, in gen eral, large contributions to epsilon (K) and/or to various electric dipole moments, even when contributions to CP conserving, flavor changing processe s are sufficiently suppressed. Some examples are models of dilaton dominanc e, alignment, non-Abelian flavor symmetries, heavy first two generation sfe rmions, anomaly mediation and gaugino mediation. There is then strong motiv ation for "approximate CP," that is, a situation where all CP violating pha ses are small. In contrast, in supersymmetric models with a low breaking sc ale it is quite plausible that the CKM matrix is the only source of flavor and CP violation. Gauge mediation provides a concrete example. Approximate CP is then unacceptable. Upcoming measurements of the CP asymmetry in B-->p siK(S) might exclude or support the idea of approximate CP and consequently probe the scale of supersymmetry breaking.