Metastable supersymmetry breaking and gauge/gravity duality

We discuss metastable supersymmetry breaking states in gauge theories and in their gravity duals. We then engineer a quiver gauge theory with several interesting features by studying D-branes at a simple Calabi-Yau singularity. At weak 't Hooft coupling we argue using field theory techniques that it admits, besides the supersymmetric vacua, also metastable non-supersymmetric vacua, though the arguments indicating the existence of the latter are not decisive. At strong 't Hooft coupling we present a simple candidate gravity dual description for both sets of vacua. (C) 2007 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.