Monopoles, Duality and Chiral Symmetry Breaking in N=2 Supersymmetric QCD

TL;DR

This paper analyzes N=2 supersymmetric SU(2) gauge theories, deriving exact moduli space metrics and spectra, revealing phenomena like monopole-driven chiral symmetry breaking and dualities involving electric-magnetic symmetry and triality.

Contribution

It provides the exact metric on the moduli space and spectrum for N=2 supersymmetric SU(2) gauge theories with matter, uncovering new phenomena such as monopole-induced chiral symmetry breaking.

Findings

Exact moduli space metric derived

Magnetic monopoles induce chiral symmetry breaking

Duality relations involving electric-magnetic symmetry and SO(8) triality

Abstract

We study four dimensional $N=2$ supersymmetric gauge theories with matter multiplets. For all such models for which the gauge group is $SU(2)$, we derive the exact metric on the moduli space of quantum vacua and the exact spectrum of the stable massive states. A number of new physical phenomena occur, such as chiral symmetry breaking that is driven by the condensation of magnetic monopoles that carry global quantum numbers. For those cases in which conformal invariance is broken only by mass terms, the formalism automatically gives results that are invariant under electric-magnetic duality. In one instance, this duality is mixed in an interesting way with $SO(8)$ triality.