Scalar potentials and accidental symmetries in supersymmetric U(1)' models

Abstract We address two closely related problems associated with the singlet scalars' potential that are often present in supersymmetric U ( 1 ) ′ models, especially those which maintain the gauge unification of the MSSM in a simple way. The first is the possibility of an accidental global symmetry which results in a light Goldstone boson. The second is the problem of generating a vacuum expectation value for more than one field without reintroducing the μ problem. We give sufficient conditions for addressing both issues and provide a concrete example to generate them.