On the smallness of the cosmological constant
  In N=1 supergravity the scalar potential of the hidden sector may have
degenerate supersymmetric (SUSY) and non-supersymmetric Minkowski vacua. In
this case local SUSY in the second supersymmetric Minkowski phase can be broken
dynamically. Assuming that such a second phase and the phase associated with
the physical vacuum are exactly degenerate, we estimate the value of the
cosmological constant. We argue that the observed value of the dark energy
density can be reproduced if in the second vacuum local SUSY breaking is
induced by gaugino condensation at a scale which is just slightly lower than
\Lambda_{QCD} in the physical vacuum. The presence of a third degenerate
vacuum, in which local SUSY and electroweak (EW) symmetry are broken near the
Planck scale, may lead to small values of the quartic Higgs self--coupling and
the corresponding beta function at the Planck scale in the phase in which we
live.
