No Arabic abstract
We study N=1 supersymmetric SU(2) gauge theory in four dimensions with a large number of massless quarks. We argue that effective superpotentials as a function of local gauge-invariant chiral fields should exist for these theories. We show that although the superpotentials are singular, they nevertheless correctly describe the moduli space of vacua, are consistent under RG flow to fewer flavors upon turning on masses, and also reproduce by a tree-level calculation the higher-derivative F-terms calculated by Beasely and Witten (hep-th/0409149) using instanton methods. We note that this phenomenon can also occur in supersymmetric gauge theories in various dimensions.
We study $N=1$ supersymmetric $SP(N_c)$ gauge theories with $N_f$ flavors of quarks in the fundamental representation. Depending on $N_f$ and $N_c$, we find exact, dynamically generated superpotentials, smooth quantum moduli spaces of vacua, quantum moduli spaces of vacua with additional massless composites at strong coupling, confinement without chiral symmetry breaking, non-trivial fixed points of the renormalization group, and massless magnetic quarks and gluons.
The relation between the trace and R-current anomalies in supersymmetric theories implies that the U$(1)_RF^2$, U$(1)_R$ and U$(1)_R^3$ anomalies which are matched in studies of N=1 Seiberg duality satisfy positivity constraints. Some constraints are rigorous and others conjectured as four-dimensional generalizations of the Zamolodchikov $c$-theorem. These constraints are tested in a large number of N=1 supersymmetric gauge theories in the non-Abelian Coulomb phase, and they are satisfied in all renormalizable models with unique anomaly-free R-current, including those with accidental symmetry. Most striking is the fact that the flow of the Euler anomaly coefficient, $a_{UV}-a_{IR}$, is always positive, as conjectured by Cardy.
Using the generalized Konishi anomaly (GKA) equations, we derive the effective superpotential of four-dimensional N=1 supersymmetric SU(n) gauge theory with n+2 fundamental flavors. We find, however, that the GKA equations are only integrable in the Seiberg dual description of the theory, but not in the direct description of the theory. The failure of integrability in the direct, strongly coupled, description suggests the existence of non-perturbative corrections to the GKA equations.
In this note we study IR limits of pure two-dimensional supersymmetric gauge theories with semisimple non-simply-connected gauge groups including SU(k)/Z_k, SO(2k)/Z_2, Sp(2k)/Z_2, E_6/Z_3, and E_7/Z_2 for various discrete theta angles, both directly in the gauge theory and also in nonabelian mirrors, extending a classification begun in previous work. We find in each case that there are supersymmetric vacua for precisely one value of the discrete theta angle, and no supersymmetric vacua for other values, hence supersymmetry is broken in the IR for most discrete theta angles. Furthermore, for the one distinguished value of the discrete theta angle for which supersymmetry is unbroken, the theory has as many twisted chiral multiplet degrees of freedom in the IR as the rank. We take this opportunity to further develop the technology of nonabelian mirrors to discuss how the mirror to a G gauge theory differs from the mirror to a G/K gauge theory for K a subgroup of the center of G. In particular, the discrete theta angles in these cases are considerably more intricate than those of the pure gauge theories studied in previous papers, so we discuss the realization of these more complex discrete theta angles in the mirror construction. We find that discrete theta angles, both in the original gauge theory and their mirrors, are intimately related to the descriptions of centers of universal covering groups as quotients of weight lattices by root sublattices. We perform numerous consistency checks, comparing results against basic group-theoretic relations as well as with decomposition, which describes how two-dimensional theories with one-form symmetries (such as pure gauge theories with nontrivial centers) decompose into disjoint unions, in this case of pure gauge theories with quotiented gauge groups and discrete theta angles.
Seiberg-Witten solutions of four-dimensional supersymmetric gauge theories possess rich but involved integrable structures. The goal of this paper is to show that an isomonodromy problem provides a unified framework for understanding those various features of integrability. The Seiberg-Witten solution itself can be interpreted as a WKB limit of this isomonodromy problem. The origin of underlying Whitham dynamics (adiabatic deformation of an isospectral problem), too, can be similarly explained by a more refined asymptotic method (multiscale analysis). The case of $N=2$ SU($s$) supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory without matter is considered in detail for illustration. The isomonodromy problem in this case is closely related to the third Painleve equation and its multicomponent analogues. An implicit relation to $ttbar$ fusion of topological sigma models is thereby expected.