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When local supersymmetry is spontaneously broken, the gravitino absorbs the goldstino and becomes massive. The two goldstino states provide its longitudinal spin-$1/2$ polarizations. With only global supersymmetry breaking, the goldstino remains a physical massless particle. An ordinary supersymmetric Higgs mechanism instead makes an internal spin-one gauge boson massive and can leave supersymmetry unbroken.

The four-dimensional membrane Fierz rearrangement identity $(C{\gamma }_{mn}{)}_{(\alpha \beta }(C{\gamma }^n{)}_{\gamma \delta )}=0$ makes the displayed supertranslation-invariant four-form closed. It is locally the exterior derivative of a three-form potential, which can change by an exact form under target supersymmetry. Pulling the potential back to a closed worldvolume gives an invariant Wess-Zumino brane coupling. The charge magnitude and normalization of this form are fixed together by cancellation of the area variation under kappa symmetry.

String theories with worldsheet fermionic degrees of freedom and the corresponding supersymmetric consistency conditions. In the RNS string description, consistent supersymmetric GSO projections produce spacetime supersymmetry and remove the NS tachyon. The flat critical dimension is ten. Worldsheet supersymmetry alone does not guarantee spacetime supersymmetry without a suitable projection.

A supersymmetric action is invariant under supersymmetry up to boundary terms. For ordinary four-dimensional chiral superfields, a full superspace integration of a real Kähler potential and a chiral superspace integration of a superpotential provide the two-derivative ungauged action.

The candidate zero modes are $e^{-{\int }^{x}w}$ in the minus sector and $e^{+{\int }^{x}w}$ in the plus sector; this follows from the positive squared-norm expressions for their energy. Their membership in the Hilbert space determines whether supersymmetry is unbroken. For $w=x$ only the first is normalizable. For $w=x^2+a$, $a>0$, neither is normalizable, while both partner potentials grow quartically and have discrete spectra. Thus their strictly positive lowest energy is paired and supersymmetry is broken, with zero Witten index.

At a vacuum obeying F-flatness and D-flatness, charged scalar field expectation values can break an internal gauge symmetry while preserving supersymmetry. For each broken generator, a massless vector multiplet combines with a chiral superfield into a massive N=1 vector multiplet. The vector absorbs one real Goldstone boson; a real scalar remains, and the gaugino mixes with a higgsino. All four bosonic and four fermionic on-shell states have a common mass.

A supersymmetry transformation is the infinitesimal action generated by an odd supercharge, with constant anticommuting spinor parameter in a global theory. In superspace it acts as $\delta \mathcal{S}=(ϵQ+\overline{ϵ}\bar{Q})\mathcal{S}$, with possible conventional overall factors of $i$. On the fermion of a chiral superfield, the transformation includes $\delta \psi =\sqrt{2}ϵF_{\mathrm{aux}}+i\sqrt{2}{\sigma }^{\mu }\overline{ϵ}{\partial }_{\mu }\varphi$. A nonzero vacuum auxiliary field therefore gives an inhomogeneous fermion shift, identifying the Goldstino direction when global supersymmetry is spontaneously broken.

A small mass is technically protected when its vanishing restores a symmetry that restricts the corresponding quantum corrections. Gauge protection of a vector mass, chiral protection of a fermion mass, and supersymmetry protection of scalar masses use different symmetry constraints. This is a radiative-stability statement, not a proof that all small numerical parameters require such protection.

For canonical positive kinetic terms in global supersymmetry, $V={\sum }_k|W_k{|}^2$ has mixed Hessian matrix $V_{i\bar{j}}={\sum }_k{W}_{ki}\overline{W_{kj}}$ and holomorphic block $V_{ij}={\sum }_k\overline{W_k}{W}_{kij}$. The $2n$ real scalar squared-mass sum is $2\mathrm{tr}(m^{†}m)$ for the chiral-superfield fermion mass matrix $m=W_{ij}$. Each Weyl spinor contributes two states, giving the same fermion weighted sum. Thus their boson-minus-fermion supertrace vanishes even with F-term breaking. The holomorphic Hessian splits real scalar masses without changing their sum. Noncanonical Kähler metrics, supergravity, and radiative corrections require different formulas.

In light-cone coordinates $x^{\pm }$ on two-dimensional Minkowski spacetime, add two real odd Grassmann variables ${\theta }^{\pm }$. With left Grassmann derivatives, the supercharges and supersymmetric covariant derivatives can be represented asThe identity $\{{\partial }_{\theta },\theta \}=1$ gives $Q_{\pm }^2=i{\partial }_{\pm }$, $D_{\pm }^2=-i{\partial }_{\pm }$, $\{Q_{+},Q_{-}\}=\{D_{+},D_{-}\}=0$, and $\{Q_s,D_t\}=0$ for every $s,t$. A Lorentz boost acts as $x^{\pm }\mapsto e^{\pm \omega }{x}^{\pm }$, ${\theta }^{\pm }\mapsto e^{\pm \omega /2}{\theta }^{\pm }$. Thus $D_{\pm }$ have boost weights $\mp 1/2$, and $D_{-}{D}_{+}$ is a Lorentz scalar. Since it commutes with both supercharges, an equation $i{D}_{-}{D}_{+}\Phi =W(\Phi )$ for an even scalar superfield is Lorentz invariant and supersymmetry covariant.

Localizing the rigid supersymmetry of a free Wess–Zumino model produces a derivative of the supersymmetry parameter multiplying the supercurrent. The Noether gauging procedure introduces a gravitino coupled to this current. Closure also requires a vierbein, the Einstein-Hilbert action, covariant matter kinetic terms and higher-order interactions. The leading gravitino-matter coupling contains the derivative of the scalar, not its undifferentiated value.

Local supersymmetry on a string worldsheet relates embedding coordinates to their worldsheet Majorana fermion partners. Fixing this fermionic gauge symmetry introduces commuting superconformal ghosts.