Supersymmetric quantum field theory (QFT): Introduction

Abstract Supersymmetry has been proposed, in particular as a principle to solve the so-called fine-tuning problem in particle physics by relating the masses of scalar particles (like Higgs fields) to those of fermions, which can be protected against ‘large’ mass renormalization by chiral symmetry. However, supersymmetry is, at best, an approximate symmetry broken at a scale beyond the reach of a large hadron collider (LHC), because the possible supersymmetric partners of known particles have not been discovered yet (2020) and thus, if they exist, must be much heavier. Exact supersymmetry would also have implied the vanishing of the vacuum energy and thus, of the cosmological constant. The discovery of dark energy has a natural interpretation as resulting from a very small cosmological constant. However, a naive model based on broken supersymmetry would still predict 60 orders of magnitude too large a value compared to 120 orders of magnitude otherwise. Gauging supersymmetry leads naturally to a unification with gravity, because the commutators of supersymmetry currents involve the energy momentum tensor. First, examples of supersymmetric theories involving scalar superfields, simple generalizations of supersymmetric quantum mechanics (QM) are described. The new feature of supersymmetry in higher dimensions is the combination of supersymmetry with spin, since fermions have spins. In four dimensions, theories with chiral scalar fields and vector fields are constructed.