Quantum Vacuum, Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and Spontaneous Supersymmetry Breaking

We study the behavior of the vacuum condensates characterizing many physical phenomena. We show that condensates due to thermal states, to fields in curved space, and to neutrino mixing, may represent new components of the dark matter, whereas the condensate due to axion-photon mixing can contribute to the dark energy. Moreover, by considering a supersymmetric framework, we show that the nonzero energy of vacuum condensates may induce a spontaneous supersymmetry breaking.