On quadratic divergences in supergravity, vacuum energy and the supersymmetric flavor problem

We examine the phenomenological consequences of quadratically divergent contributions to the scalar potential in supergravity effective Lagrangians. We focus specifically on the effect of these corrections on the vacuum configuration of scalar fields in softly-broken supersymmetric theories and the role these corrections play in generating nondiagonal soft scalar masses. Both effects can only be properly studied when the divergences are regulated in a manifestly supersymmetric manner-something which has thus far been neglected in past treatments. We show how a supersymmetric regularization can impact past conclusions about both types of phenomena and discuss what types of high-energy theories are likely to be safe from unwanted flavor-changing neutral current interactions in the context of supergravity theories derived from heterotic string compactifications.