Quark Number Fractionalization in N=2 Supersymmetric $SU(2) \times U(1)^{N_f}$ Gauge Theories

We derive general low energy dynamics of monopoles and dyons in N=2 and N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories by utilising a collective coordinate expansion. The resulting new kind of supersymmetric quantum mechanics incorporates the effects of multiple Higgs fields, both in the N=2 vector multiplet and hypermultiplets, having non-vanishing expectation values.

Three closely related issues will be discussed. Magnetic quarks having non-Abelian charges have been found recently to appear as the dominant infrared degrees of freedom in some vacua of softly broken N=2 supersymmetric QCD with SU(n_c) gauge group. Their condensation upon N=1 perturbation causes confinement and dynamical symmetry breaking. We argue that these magnetic quarks can be naturally related to the semiclassical non-Abelian monopoles of the type first discussed by Go...

We present a general analysis of all the possible soft breakings of N=2 supersymmetric QCD, preserving the analytic properties of the Seiberg-Witten solutions for the SU(2) group with Nf=1, 2, 3 hypermultiplets. We obtain all the couplings of the spurion fields in terms of properties of the Seiberg-Witten periods, which we express in terms of elementary elliptic functions by uniformizing the elliptic curves associated to each number of flavors. We analyze in detail the monodr...

This paper contains the results of our investigations of BPS instantons and of our work on N=2 supersymmetric gauge theories. The BPS instantons we study appear in type II string theory compactifications on Calabi-Yau threefolds. In the corresponding four-dimensional effective supergravity actions the BPS instantons arise as finite action solutions to the Euclidean equations of motion. For N=2 supersymmetric gauge theories we construct general Lagrangians involving gauge grou...

This is a general introduction to electric-magnetic duality in non-abelian gauge theories. In chapter I, I review the general ideas which led in the late 70s to the idea of electric/magnetic duality in quantum field theory. In chapters II and III, I focus mainly on N=2 supersymmetric theories. I present the lagrangians and explain in more or less detail the non-renormalization theorems, rigid special geometry, supersymmetric instanton calculus, charge fractionization, the sem...

The analysis in previous publications of the instanton constraints required to produce a finite action of the theory is carried out also for N=2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory.

A new universal model to implement the Seiberg-Witten approach to low-energy properties of the supersymmetric N=2 gauge theory with an arbitrary compact simple gauge group, classical or exceptional, is suggested. It is based on the hyperelliptic curve, whose genus equals the rank of the gauge group. The weak and strong coupling limits are reproduced. The magnetic and electric charges of light dyons, which are present in the proposed model comply with recent predictions derive...

In the previous paper, we have shown the existence of magnetic monopoles in the pure $SU(2)$ Yang--Mills theory with a gauge-invariant mass term for the gluon field being introduced. In this paper, we extend our previous construction of magnetic monopoles to obtain dyons with both magnetic and electric charges. In fact, we solve under the static and spherically symmetric ansatz the field equations of the $SU(2)$ "complementary" gauge-scalar model, which is the $SU(2)$ Yang--M...

These are notes from introductory lectures given at the Ecole Normale in Paris and at the Strasbourg meeting dedicated to the memory of Claude Itzykson. I review in considerable detail and in a hopefully pedagogical way the work of Seiberg and Witten on $N=2$ supersymmetric $SU(2)$ gauge theory without extra matter. This presentation basically follows their original work, except in the last section where the low-energy effective action is obtained emphasizing more the relatio...

We study supersymmetric $SO(N_c)$ gauge theories with $N_f$ flavors of quarks in the vector representation. Among the phenomena we find are dynamically generated superpotentials with physically inequivalent branches, smooth moduli spaces of vacua, confinement and oblique confinement, confinement without chiral symmetry breaking, massless composites (glueballs, exotics, monopoles and dyons), non-trivial fixed points of the renormalization group and massless magnetic quarks and...