Exotic Non-Supersymmetric Gauge Dynamics from Supersymmetric QCD

TL;DR

This paper explores how adding soft supersymmetry breaking to supersymmetric QCD reveals new exotic vacua and states, potentially observable in lattice simulations, extending the understanding of non-supersymmetric gauge dynamics.

Contribution

It demonstrates the persistence of Seiberg duality and uncovers novel exotic vacua in non-supersymmetric limits of supersymmetric QCD.

Findings

Discovery of new vacua with broken baryon number for Nf = Nc

Identification of a vacuum with unbroken chiral symmetry for Nf > Nc

Seiberg duality appears to persist with small SUSY breaking

Abstract

We extend Seiberg's qualitative picture of the behavior of supersymmetric QCD to nonsupersymmetric models by adding soft supersymmetry breaking terms. In this way, we recover the standard vacuum of QCD with $N_f$ flavors and $N_c$ colors when $N_f < N_c$. However, for $N_f \geq N_c$, we find new exotic states---new vacua with spontaneously broken baryon number for $N_f = N_c$, and a vacuum state with unbroken chiral symmetry for $N_f > N_c$. These exotic vacua contain massless composite fermions and, in some cases, dynamically generated gauge bosons. In particular Seiberg's electric-magnetic duality seems to persist also in the presence of (small) soft supersymmetry breaking. We argue that certain, specially tailored, lattice simulations may be able to detect the novel phenomena. Most of the exotic behavior does not survive the decoupling limit of large SUSY breaking parameters.