Physics of Strongly Coupled N=1 Supersymmetric SO(N_c) Gauge Theories

TL;DR

This paper develops an effective superpotential for N=1 supersymmetric SO(N_c) gauge theories, revealing dynamical flavor symmetry breaking and consistent vacuum structures, with implications for related N=2 theories.

Contribution

It constructs a novel superpotential capturing flavor symmetry breaking and decoupling properties in supersymmetric SO(N_c) theories, extending understanding of their nonperturbative dynamics.

Findings

Superpotential induces spontaneous flavor symmetry breaking from SU(N_f) to SO(N_c) x SU(N_f - N_c).

Provides holomorphic decoupling and consistent vacua with instanton effects.

Suggests a connection to N=2 SO(N_c) theories near the Chebyshev point.

Abstract

We construct an effective superpotential that describes dynamical flavor symmetry breaking in supersymmetric N=1 SO(N_c) theories with N_f-flavor quarks for N_f >= N_c. Our superpotential induces spontaneous flavor symmetry breaking of SU(N_f) down to SO(N_c)xSU(N_f-N_c) as nonabelian residual groups and respects the anomaly-matching property owing to the appearance of massless composite Nambu-Goldstone superfields. In massive SO(N_c) theories, our superpotential provides holomorphic decoupling property and consistent vacuum structure with instanton effect if N_c-2 quarks remain massless. This superpotential may reflect the remnant of physics corresponding to N=2 SO(N_c) theories near the Chebyshev point, which also exhibits dynamical flavor symmetry breaking.