Anomaly-Mediated Supersymmetry Breaking Demystified

We reinterpret anomaly-mediated supersymmetry breaking from a field-theoretic perspective in which superconformal anomalies couple to either the chiral compensator or the $U(1)_R$ vector superfield. As supersymmetry in the hidden sector is spontaneously broken by non-vanishing vacuum expectation values of the chiral compensator F-term and/or the $U(1)_R$ vector superfield D-term, the soft breakdown of supersymmetry emerges in the visible sector. This approach is physically more understandable compared with the conventional approach where the chiral compensator is treated on the same footing as a spurion in gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking scenario.