SOME PHENOMENOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF STRING LOOP EFFECTS

We investigate low energy implications of string loop corrections to supergravity couplings which break a possible flavor universality of the tree level. If supersymmetry is broken by the dilaton F-term, universal soft scalar masses arise at the leading order but string loop corrections generically induce flavor-non-diagonal soft terms. Constraints from flavor changing neutral currents (FCNC) and CP violation then require a large supersymmetry breaking scale and thus heavy gluinos and squarks. If supersymmetry is broken by moduli F-terms, universality at the string tree level can only be guaranteed by extra conditions on the Kahler potential. A large hierarchy between the gluino and squark masses ensures that FCNC and CP-violation constraints are satisfied. If the soft scalar masses vanish at the string tree level, the cosmological problems related to light moduli can be evaded. However, generic string loop corrections violate FCNC bounds and require very heavy squark masses (approximate to 100 TeV).