Confinement in N=1 SQCD: One Step Beyond Seiberg's Duality

TL;DR

This paper explores the confinement mechanism in N=1 SQCD beyond Seiberg's duality, demonstrating how dual quark condensation leads to non-Abelian flux tubes and interpreting various string configurations as hadronic states.

Contribution

It extends Seiberg's duality to include light states and shows how dual quark condensation results in non-Abelian flux tubes, providing a new understanding of confinement in SQCD.

Findings

Dual quark condensation supports non-Abelian flux tubes.

Flux tubes carry chromoelectric fields, acting as confining strings.

String junctions can be viewed as constituent quarks or glueballs.

Abstract

We consider N=1 supersymmetric quantum chromodynamics (SQCD) with the gauge group U(N_c) and N_c+N quark flavors. N_c flavors are massless; the corresponding squark fields develop (small) vacuum expectation values (VEVs) on the Higgs branch. Extra N flavors are endowed with small (and equal) mass terms. We study this theory through its Seiberg's dual: U(N) gauge theory with N_c +N flavors of "dual quark" fields plus a gauge-singlet mesonic field M. The original theory is referred to as "quark theory" while the dual one is termed "monopole theory." The suggested mild deformation of Seiberg's procedure changes the dynamical regime of the monopole theory from infrared free to asymptotically free at large distances. We show that, upon condensation of the "dual quarks," the dual theory supports non-Abelian flux tubes (strings). Seiberg's duality is extended beyond purely massless states to include light states on both sides. Being interpreted in terms of the quark theory, the monopole-theory flux tubes are supposed to carry chromoelectric fields. The string junctions -- confined monopole-theory monopoles -- can be viewed as "constituent quarks" of the original quark theory. We interpret closed strings as glueballs of the original quark theory. Moreover, there are string configurations formed by two junctions connected by a pair of different non-Abelian strings. These can be considered as constituent quark mesons of the quark theory.