Duality in the Presence of Supersymmetry Breaking

TL;DR

This paper explores how Seiberg duality in N=1 supersymmetric QCD is affected by soft supersymmetry-breaking terms, revealing potential symmetry breaking patterns and limitations of duality under large breaking.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of how soft SUSY-breaking terms map between dual theories and their impact on scalar masses and symmetry breaking.

Findings

Some scalars acquire negative mass squared, indicating potential symmetry breaking.

Duality may hold for small SUSY breaking, but breaks down at large breaking.

Magnetic theory's symmetry breaking patterns differ from those expected in QCD.

Abstract

We study Seiberg duality for N=1 supersymmetric QCD with soft supersymmetry-breaking terms. We generate the soft terms through gauge mediation by coupling two theories related by Seiberg duality to the same supersymmetry-breaking sector. In this way, we know what a supersymmetry-breaking perturbation in one theory maps into in its ``dual''. Assuming a canonical Kahler potential we calculate the soft terms induced in the magnetic theory and find that some of the scalars acquire negative masses squared. If duality is still good for small supersymmetry breaking, this may imply some specific symmetry breaking patterns for supersymmetric QCD with small soft supersymmetry-breaking masses, in the case that its dual theory is weakly coupled in the infrared. In the limit of large supersymmetry breaking, the electric theory becomes ordinary QCD. However, the resulting symmetry breaking in the magnetic theory is incompatible with that expected for QCD.