Soft supersymmetry breaking and finiteness

Abstract

We calculate the two-loop $\beta$-functions for soft supersymmetry-breaking interactions in a general supersymmetric gauge theory, emphasising the role of the evanescent couplings and masses that are generic to a non-supersymmetric theory. We also show that a simple set of conditions sufficient for one-loop finiteness renders a theory two-loop finite, and we speculate on the possible significance of finite softly broken theories.

Comments: 12pp, uses harvmac, LTH 334. Note added and minor corrections to Eqs. (9), (12) and (16)