THE B-L/ELECTROWEAK HIERARCHY IN SMOOTH HETEROTIC COMPACTIFICATIONS

E-8 x E-8 heterotic string and M-theory, when appropriately compactified, can give rise to realistic, N = 1 supersymmetric particle physics. In particular, the exact matter spectrum of the MSSM, including three right-handed neutrino supermultiplets, one per family, and one pair of Higgs-Higgs conjugate superfields is obtained by compactifying on Calabi-Yau manifolds admitting specific SU(4) vector bundles. These "heterotic standard models" have the SU(3)(C)xSU(2)(L)xU(1)(Y) gauge group of the standard model augmented by an additional gauged U(1)(B-L). Their minimal content requires that the B - L gauge symmetry be spontaneously broken by a vacuum expectation value of at least one right-handed sneutrino. In a previous paper, we presented the results of a renormalization group analysis showing that B - L gauge symmetry is indeed radiatively broken with a B - L/electroweak hierarchy of O(10) to O(10(2)). In this paper, we present the details of that analysis, extending the results to include higher order terms in tan beta(-1) and the explicit spectrum of all squarks and sleptons.