Exact Electric-Magnetic Duality in N=2 Supersymmetric QCD Theories

TL;DR

This paper investigates the exact electric-magnetic duality in N=2 supersymmetric QCD theories with SU(N_c) gauge groups, analyzing the particle spectrum, duality transformations, and phase transitions to understand the duality's consistency.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the duality transformation and monopole spectrum in N=2 SQCD, highlighting differences for various gauge groups and discussing challenges in defining duality.

Findings

Computed classical monopole spectra for these theories

Identified difficulties in defining duality for general gauge groups

Discussed phase transitions affecting duality checks

Abstract

We analyze the Coulomb phase of theories of $N=2$ SQCD with $SU(N_c)$ gauge groups which are conjectured to have exact electric-magnetic duality. We discuss the duality transformation of the particle spectrum, emphasizing the differences between the general case and the $SU(2)$ case. Some difficulties associated with the definition of the duality transformation for a general gauge group are discussed. We compute the classical monopole spectrum of these theories, and when it is possible we use it to check the consistency of the duality. Generally these theories may have phase transitions between strong and weak coupling, which prevent the semi-classical computation from being useful for checking the duality.