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This paper explores the process of vacuum decay in supersymmetric models related to flux compactifications. In particular, we describe these instabilities within supersymmetric Lagrangians for a single three-form multiplet. This multiplet combines scalar fields, representing the moduli fields in four dimensions, with 3-form fields that influence the potential for these moduli via the integer flux of their associated 4-form field strength. Furthermore, using supersymmetry as a guide we obtain the form of the couplings of these fields to the membranes that act as sources to the 3-form potentials. Adding small supersymmetry breaking terms to these Lagrangians one can obtain instanton solutions describing the decay of the vacua in these models by the formation of a membrane bubble. These instantons combine the usual Coleman-de Luccia and the Brown-Teitelboim formalisms in a single unified model. We study simple numerical examples of theories with and without gravity in this new framework and generalize known Euclidean methods to accomodate the simulataneous inclusion of scalar fields and charged membranes to these instanton solutions. Moreover, we show explicitly in these examples how one recovers the static supersymmetric solutions in the limiting case where the supersymmetry breaking terms vanish. In this limit, the bubble becomes infinite and flat and represents a hybrid between the usual supersymmetric domain walls of field theory models and the brane solutions interpolating between the supersymmetric vacua; a sort of dressed supermembrane BPS solution. Finally, we briefly comment on the implications of these solutions in cosmological models based on the String Theory Landscape where these type of 4d effective theories could be relevant in inflationary scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We construct a manifestly supersymmetric and kappa-symmetry invariant worldvolume action describing the coupling of a dynamical membrane to an N = 1, D = 4 SU(N) super-Yang-Mills multiplet. Worldvolume scalar fields in this action are a Gold-stone and a Goldstino associated with spontaneous breaking, by the membrane, of half of N = 1, D = 4 supersymmetry. When the Goldstone fields are set to zero, the model reduces to an N = 1, d = 3 SU(N) Chern-Simons theory induced by the SYM coupling. We show that, when the membrane couples to the Veneziano-Yankielowicz (VY) effective theory of the N = 1 SYM, it sources VY bulk field equations, separates two distinct SYM vacua and provides the missing contribution to the tension of BPS saturated domain-wall configurations, for which the membrane serves as a core. As a result, we obtain explicit BPS domain-wall solutions in the Veneziano-Yankielowicz theory. We also briefly discuss a supersymmetric system of an open membrane having a string attached to its boundary and coupled to a massive extension of the Veneziano-Yankielowicz model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We propose superfield equations in tensorial -extended superspaces to describe the supersymmetric generalizations of free conformal higher spin theories. These can be obtained by quantizing a superparticle model in -extended tensorial superspace. The -extended higher spin supermultiplets just contain scalar and ‘spinor’ fields in tensorial space so that, in contrast with the standard (super)space approach, no nontrivial generalizations of the Maxwell or Einstein equations to tensorial space appear when . For , the higher spin-tensorial components of the extended tensorial superfields are expressed through additional scalar and spinor fields in tensorial space which obey the same free higher spin equations, but that are axion-like in the sense that they possess Peccei–Quinn-like symmetries. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: We present the superfield action for the dynamical , supermembrane in interaction with a dynamical scalar multiplet and use it to derive the superfield equations of motion. These include the supermembrane equations, which formally coincide with equations of supermembrane in a background of the (off-shell) scalar multiplet, and the special chiral superfield equations with supermembrane source. In the case when the scalar supermultiplet part of the action contains only the simplest kinetic term we have also extracted the spacetime component field equations from the superfield equations and solve these in the leading order on supermembrane tension. The inclusion of nontrivial superpotential and relation with known supersymmetric domain wall solutions is briefly discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In subsection 6.3 of the paper it has not been taken into account that the domain wall solutions for |k| = N found therein do not satisfy the non-negativity of the contribution to the domain wall tension of the energy density of the scalar field s(x). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]