Monopole Condensation and Confining Phase of N=1 Gauge Theories Via M Theory Fivebrane

TL;DR

This paper uses M theory fivebrane configurations to analyze the moduli space, monopole condensation, and confinement in N=1 supersymmetric gauge theories, comparing geometric and field theory results.

Contribution

It provides a geometric approach via fivebrane configurations to study vacua, monopole condensation, and superpotentials in N=1 gauge theories, highlighting exact and approximate results.

Findings

Monopole and meson VEVs computed from fivebrane configurations.

Effective superpotential is exact for SU(2) but not for higher groups.

Analysis of N=1 fixed points using brane geometry.

Abstract

The fivebrane of M theory is used in order to study the moduli space of vacua of confining phase N=1 supersymmetric gauge theories in four dimensions. The supersymmetric vacua correspond to the condensation of massless monopoles and confinement of photons. The monopole and meson vacuum expectation values are computed using the fivebrane configuration. The comparison of the fivebrane computation and the field theory analysis shows that at vacua with a classically enhanced gauge group SU(r) the effective superpotential obtained by the "integrating in" method is exact for r=2 but is not exact for r > 2. The fivebrane configuration corresponding to N=1 gauge theories with Landau-Ginzburg type superpotentials is studied. N=1 non-trivial fixed points are analyzed using the brane geometry.