Scherk–Schwarz supersymmetry breaking with radion stabilization Original Research Article

We study the issue of radion stabilization within five-dimensional supersymmetric theories compactified on the orbifold S1/Z2. We break supersymmetry by the Scherk–Schwarz mechanism and explain its implementation in the off-shell formulation of five-dimensional supergravity in terms of the tensor and linear compensator multiplets. We show that radion stabilization may be achieved by radiative corrections in the presence of five-dimensional fields which are quasi-localized on the boundaries through the presence of Z2 odd mass terms. For the mechanism to work the number of quasi-localized fields should be greater than 2+NV−Nh where NV and Nh are the number of massless gauge- and hypermultiplets in the bulk. The radion is stabilized in a metastable Minkowski vacuum with a lifetime much larger than cosmological time-scales. The radion mass is in the meV range making it interesting for present and future measurements of deviations from the gravitational inverse-square law in the submillimeter range.