SQCD Vacua and Geometrical Engineering

TL;DR

This paper explores geometrical engineering methods to construct and analyze various vacua in N=1 SQCD, including supersymmetric and metastable non-supersymmetric states, through brane configurations and geometric transitions.

Contribution

It extends the geometrical engineering framework to include extra massive adjoint fields and non-holomorphic cycle branes, revealing new vacua structures in SQCD.

Findings

Identification of vacua via brane configurations and geometric transitions

Discovery of metastable non-supersymmetric vacua through tachyon condensation

Analysis of cycle deformations leading to diverse vacuum states

Abstract

We consider the geometrical engineering constructions for the N = 1 SQCD vacua recently proposed by Giveon and Kutasov. After one T-duality, the geometries with wrapped D5 branes become N = 1 brane configurations with NS branes and D4 branes. The field theories encoded by the geometries contain extra massive adjoint fields for the flavor group. After performing a flop, the geometries contain branes, antibranes and branes wrapped on non-holomorphic cycles. The various tachyon condensations between pairs of wrapped D5 branes and anti D5 branes together with deformations of the cycles give rise to a variety of supersymmetric and metastable non-supersymmetric vacua.