Effective Mu-Term in Superstring Theory

Abstract

In four-dimensional compactifications of the heterotic superstring theory the Kähler potential has a form which generically induces a superpotential mass term for Higgs particles once supersymmetry is broken at low energies. This ``$\mu$-term'' is analyzed in a model-independent way at the tree level and in the one-loop approximation, and explicit expressions are obtained for orbifold compactifications. Additional contributions which arise in the case of supersymmetry breaking induced by gaugino condensation are also discussed.

Comments: 28 pages (LaTeX, 2 figures attached as uuencoded ps files), NUB-3084 - IC/94/72 - CPTH-A282.0194, to appear in Nuclear Physics B (revised version contains modifications due to the presence of extra massless states at some special points of the moduli space in orbifold models)