= Solution
Three independent motivations are \b[radiative stability, gauge unification and dark matter]. First, <supersymmetric cancellation of quadratic divergences> protects the Higgs <scalar mass> from the <hierarchy problem>; residual corrections are controlled by <soft supersymmetry breaking>, so avoiding large cancellations favours a breaking scale near the weak scale. Second, <supersymmetric gauge coupling unification> can reconcile the running of the three <Standard Model> couplings when <superpartner> thresholds lie near that scale. Third, with conserved <R-parity>, a stable <lightest supersymmetric particle> can provide <dark matter>, and weak-scale annihilation can produce an appropriate thermal abundance. These are conditional motivations, not proofs of a TeV threshold. Even without low-scale discovery, <supersymmetry> remains important \b[as a structure in supergravity and superstring theory], potentially broken at a higher scale, and \b[as an exact calculational tool] through <superpotential non-renormalization>, <BPS states> and control of strongly coupled <quantum field theories>.
Back to article page
