Decoupling limits in multi-sector supergravities

Abstract

Conventional approaches to cosmology in supergravity assume the existence of multiple sectors that only communicate gravitationally. In principle these sectors decouple in the limit Planck mass to infinity. In practice such a limit is delicate: for generic supergravities, where sectors are combined by adding their Kahler functions, the separate superpotentials must contain non-vanishing vacuum expectation values supplementing the naive global superpotential. We show that this requires non-canonical scaling in the naive supergravity superpotential couplings to recover independent sectors of globally supersymmetric field theory in the decoupling limit Planck Mass to infinity.

Comments: 10 pages; v2, published version, refined wording and clarifying comments throughout, references added