A Note on (Meta)stable Brane Configurations in MQCD

TL;DR

This paper investigates the limitations of MQCD in capturing non-supersymmetric, meta-stable states of SQCD, showing that certain brane configurations do not correspond to true meta-stable states within MQCD.

Contribution

It demonstrates that some non-supersymmetric brane configurations in MQCD are not genuine meta-stable states, highlighting MQCD's qualitative failure to reproduce non-supersymmetric features.

Findings

Non-supersymmetric brane configurations differ at infinity from supersymmetric ground states.

Such configurations are not true meta-stable states in MQCD.

MQCD accurately describes supersymmetric features but not non-supersymmetric ones.

Abstract

We examine the M-theory version of SQCD which is known as MQCD. In the IIA limit, this theory appears to have a supersymmetry-breaking brane configuration which corresponds to the meta-stable state of N=1 SU(Nc) SQCD. However, the behavior at infinity of this non-supersymmetric brane construction differs from that of the supersymmetric ground state of MQCD. We interpret this to mean that it is not a meta-stable state in MQCD, but rather a state in another theory. This provides a concrete example of the fact that, while MQCD accurately describes the supersymmetric features of SCQD, it fails to reproduce its non-supersymmetric features (such as meta-stable states) not only quantitatively but also qualitatively.