Explaining the electroweak scale and stabilizing moduli in M theory

In a recent paper [B. Acharya, K. Bobkov, G. Kane, P. Kumar, and D. Vaman, Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 191601 (2006).] it was shown that in fluxless M theory vacua with at least two hidden sectors undergoing strong gauge dynamics and a particular form of the Kahler potential, all moduli are stabilized by the effective potential and a stable hierarchy is generated, consistent with standard gauge unification. This paper explains the results of [B. Acharya, K. Bobkov, G. Kane, P. Kumar, and D. Vaman, Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 191601 (2006).] in more detail and generalizes them, finding an essentially unique de Sitter vacuum under reasonable conditions. One of the main phenomenological consequences is a prediction which emerges from this entire class of vacua: namely, gaugino masses are significantly suppressed relative to the gravitino mass. We also present evidence that, for those vacua in which the vacuum energy is small, the gravitino mass, which sets all the superpartner masses, is automatically in the TeV-100 TeV range.