Scales of gaugino condensation and supersymmetry breaking in nonstandard M-theory embeddings

Abstract We investigate the formation of dynamical gaugino condensates and supersymmetry breaking in the compactifications of Horava–Witten theory with perturbative nonstandard embeddings. Specific models are considered where the underlying massless charged states of the condensing sector are determined by the spectra of Z 2 × Z 2 and Z 4 orbifolds with nonstandard embeddings. We find among them viable examples where gaugino condensation is triggered on the wall with the weakest gauge coupling at M GUT . In all these cases the magnitude of the condensate formed is below the energy scales at which extra dimensions are resolved, and so justifies the analysis of condensation in an effective 4-dimensional framework. We make some comments concerning the size of the largest extra dimension in the models considered. We discuss racetrack scenarios in the framework of perturbative nonstandard embeddings.