Gaugino versus sfermion masses in gauge mediation

A well-known signature of supersymmetry breaking scenarios with ordinary gauge mediation is a universal formula governing gaugino and sfermion masses such that their ratio is of order one. On the other hand, recently studied models with direct gauge mediation predict anomalously small ratios of gaugino to scalar masses. It was argued that the smallness of gaugino masses is a consequence of being in the lowest energy state of the SUSY-breaking low energy effective theory. To increase gaugino masses one either has to move to higher metastable vacuum or alternatively remain in the original SUSY-breaking vacuum but extend the theory by introducing a lower-lying vacuum elsewhere. We follow the latter strategy and show that the ratio of gaugino to sfermion masses can be continuously varied between zero and of order one by bringing in a lower vacuum from infinity. We argue that the stability of the vacuum is directly linked to the ratio between the gaugino masses and the underlying SUSY-breaking scale, i.e. the gravitino mass. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.