Electron mass anomalous dimension at $O(1/N_f^2)$ in three-dimensional $\mathcal{N}=1$ supersymmetric QED

TL;DR

This paper calculates the electron and selectron mass anomalous dimensions at next-to-leading order in 3D supersymmetric QED with many flavors, revealing differences from spinor QED and implications for conformal phases.

Contribution

It provides the first computation of critical exponents at $O(1/N_f^2)$ in 3D $ ext{SUSY}$ QED, including gauge invariance and epsilon-scalar effects.

Findings

Electron and selectron anomalous dimensions are equal due to epsilon-scalar effects.

Pure scalar and supersymmetric QED remain conformal, unlike spinor QED with dynamical mass generation.

Results extend to pure scalar QED and recover known spinor QED exponents.

Abstract

We consider massless three-dimensional $\mathcal{N}=1$ supersymmetric quantum electrodynamics (QED) with $N_f$ flavours of electrons. Within the dimensional reduction scheme, we compute the critical exponents corresponding to both the electron and selectron field and (parity-even) mass anomalous dimensions at the next-to-leading order in the $1/N_f$ expansion and in an arbitrary covariant gauge. The equality of the gauge-invariant mass anomalous dimensions of the electron and the selectron is found to result from a subtle role played by the epsilon-scalars. Our general framework also allows us to compute the critical exponents of pure scalar QED and to recover known results in the case of spinor QED. An application of our results to dynamical (s)electron mass generation is considered. We find evidence that, while dynamical flavor symmetry breaking occurs in spinor QED, both pure scalar QED and supersymmetric QED remain in an interacting conformal phase.