Dynamical SUSY Breaking in Heterotic M-Theory

It is shown that four-dimensional N=1 supersymmetric QCD with massive flavors in the fundamental representation of the gauge group can be realized in the hidden sector of E8xE8 heterotic string vacua. The number of flavors can be chosen to lie in the range of validity of the free-magnetic dual, using which one can demonstrate the existence of long-lived meta-stable non-supersymmetric vacua. This is shown explicitly for the gauge group Spin(10), but the methods are applicable to Spin(Nc), SU(Nc) and Sp(Nc) for a wide range of color index Nc. Hidden sectors of this type can potentially be used as a mechanism to break supersymmetry within the context of heterotic M-theory.