Abstract
Phys.Rev.D79:101701,2009 We discuss the coupling of heavy moduli fields to light fields when the
dynamics of the latter, absent such couplings, yields metastable vacua. We show
that the survival of the vacuum structure of the local model depends
nontrivially on the cross-couplings of the two sectors. In particular we find
that for "local" models (such as those realized by D-branes in type II string
theories) with metastable vacua breaking supersymmetry via F-terms,
cross-coupling of the two sectors at an intermediate scale can push the
metastable vacuum outside of the regime of the effective field theory. We
parametrize the region in which the metastable vacua are safe. We the show that
sufficiently small cross-couplings can be made natural. Finally, we briefly
discuss the role of moduli in stringy realizations of "retrofitted"
SUSY-breaking sectors.