Superfield derivation of the low-energy effective theory of softly broken supersymmetry Original Research Article

We analyze the soft supersymmetry breaking parameters obtained in grand unified theories after integrating out the heavy GUT states. The superfield formalism greatly simplifies the calculations and allows us to derive the low-energy effective theory in the general case of non-universal and non-proportional soft terms by means of a few Feynman diagrams. We find new contributions not considered before. We discuss the implications for the destabilization of the gauge hierarchy, flavor violating processes and the non-unification of sparticle masses in unified theories.