Complete N=4 Structure of Low-Energy Effective Action in N=4 Super Yang-Mills Theories

TL;DR

This paper constructs the complete low-energy effective action for N=4 Super Yang-Mills theories using an N=2 superfield approach, completing known potentials to full N=4 invariants and analyzing their quantum correction implications.

Contribution

It provides the first explicit construction of the full N=4 supersymmetric effective action including hypermultiplet contributions, extending known N=2 results.

Findings

Logarithmic effective potentials can be completed to N=4 invariants.

Non-logarithmic potentials cannot be extended to N=4 invariants.

Certain proposed potentials are excluded as quantum corrections in N=4 SYM.

Abstract

Using the ${\cal N}=2$ superfield approach, we construct full ${\cal N}=4$ supersymmetric low-energy effective actions for ${\cal N}=4$ SYM models, with both ${\cal N}=2$ gauge superfield strengths and hypermultiplet superfields included. The basic idea is to complete the known non-holomorphic effective potentials which depend only on ${\cal N}=2$ superfield strengths $W$ and ${\bar W}$ to the full on-shell ${\cal N}=4$ invariants by adding the appropriate superfield hypermultiplet terms. We prove that the effective potentials of the form ${ln} W {ln} \bar W$ can be ${\cal N} = 4$ completed in this way and present the precise structure of the corresponding completions. However, the effective potentials of the non-logarithmic form suggested in hep-th/9811017 and hep-th/9909020 do not admit the ${\cal N}=4$ completion. Therefore, such potentials cannot come out as (perturbative or non-perturbative) quantum corrections in ${\cal N}=4$ SYM models.