Orbifold projection in supersymmetric QCD at N_f\leq N_c

TL;DR

This paper investigates whether orbifold projection commutes with the infrared limit in supersymmetric QCD with fewer flavors than colors, revealing differences at finite N_c but convergence in the large N_c limit under certain conditions.

Contribution

It demonstrates that orbifolding and taking the infrared limit do not commute at finite N_c, but they coincide in the large N_c limit for stabilized vacua, and explores soliton effects in quantum modified moduli space.

Findings

At finite N_c, low-energy theories differ depending on the order of operations.

In the large N_c limit, theories coincide for stabilized vacua.

Presence of baryonic solitons in orbifolded theories may restore correspondence.

Abstract

Supersymmetric orbifold projection of N=1 SQCD with relatively small number of flavors (not larger than the number of colors) is considered. The purpose is to check whether orbifolding commutes with the infrared limit. On the one hand, one considers the orbifold projection of SQCD and obtains the low-energy description of the resulting theory. On the other hand, one starts with the low-energy effective theory of the original SQCD, and only then perfoms orbifolding. It is shown that at finite N_c the two low-energy theories obtained in these ways are different. However, in the case of stabilized run-away vacuum these two theories are shown to coincide in the large N_c limit. In the case of quantum modified moduli space, topological solitons carrying baryonic charges are present in the orbifolded low-energy theory. These solitons may restore the correspondence between the two theories provided that the soliton mass tends to zero in the large N_c limit.