Matt Visser's Ph.D thesis abstract

We discuss N = 1 supergravity coupled to gauged chiral matter. We retain noncanonical kinetic energy terms for both matter and gauge fields. The tree level spontaneous breaking of supergravity in such theories is investigated. Emphasis is placed on general results rather than any particular model. The tree level mass matrices are calculated, and used to derive a (mass)2 sum rule that retains the effects of the noncanonical kinetic energies. Even in the presence of noncanonical kinetic energies it is shown that under not too restrictive conditions we can relate the masses of leptons and quarks to the masses of their scalar partners by

m0+/- = | m3/2 +/- m1/2 |.

Attention is also drawn to the crucial role played by the analyticity of the superpotential at the origin of field space.