Dr. Altan Cakir

Flavor Violation in Supersymmetry: Supergravity and String Model Sensitivities to the Supersymmetric Threshold Corrections Dr. Altan Cakir

In a supersymmetric theory, all interactions are to be symmetric under the ex- change of bosons and fermions ? the superpartners. However, supersymmetry must be an explicitly yet softly broken symmetry of nature, and supersymmetry breaking parameters, the so-called soft terms, give rise to various phenomena observable at LHC and future experiments, such as ILC. The mixing among different flavors of matter ? the flavor violation ? is one such phenomenon which exhibits a strong dependence on the structure of the soft terms. In particular, decoupling of superpartners from the particle spectrum at a threshold energy near the ultraviolet scale of the standard model induces sizeable corrections to flavor violating interactions. These corrections are strong enough to disqualify an otherwise viable high-scale flavor model by a con- frontation with experiments at low energy. This work focusses a class of flavor models, following from strings or supergravity, and provides a through analysis of their sensitivities to supersymmetric threshold corrections.