Goldstino

A goldstino is the massless spin-one-half mode associated with spontaneously broken global supersymmetry. For F-term breaking, the fermion in a multiplet with nonzero auxiliary field transforms by an inhomogeneous term, $\delta G\supset \sqrt{2}ϵF$. In supergravity, the corresponding mode supplies the longitudinal degrees of freedom of a massive gravitino.

For canonical global four-dimensional N=1 supersymmetry, define $F^i=\overline{W_i}$, $H_{ij}=W_{ij}$ and $G_{ia}=g^a{\bar{\varphi }}_j(T^a{)}^j{}_i$ at a stationary vacuum. Gauge invariance of the superpotential gives $G^{T}F=0$, while stationarity of $V={\sum }_i|W_i{|}^2+\frac{1}{2}{\sum }_a(D^a{)}^2$ gives $HF-GD=0$. Therefore the canonically normalized fermion mass matrix, after a harmless gaugino phase choice, obeysIf supersymmetry is broken, this vector is nonzero and specifies a massless Goldstino. The matrix with off-diagonal blocks $-G$ instead acts on $(F,D)$; it is related to the canonical matrix by a change of normalization, not by equality of canonical entries. Additional zero modes can coexist with the Goldstino.

Stationarity of a canonical global F-term scalar potential gives ${\partial }_{i}V={\sum }_j{W}_{ij}\overline{W_j}=0$. If some $F_j=-\overline{W_j}$ is nonzero, this vector is in the kernel of the chiral-superfield fermion mass matrix. It supplies the massless goldstino direction. If every $F_j$ vanishes, this argument gives no broken-symmetry mode.