Duality in a supersymmetric gauge theory from a perturbative viewpoint

Abstract

We study duality in N=1 supersymmetric QCD in the non-Abelian Coulomb phase, order-by-order in scheme-independent series expansions. Using exact results, we show how the dimensions of various fundamental and composite chiral superfields, and the quantities a, c, a/c, and b at superconformal fixed points of the renormalization group emerge in scheme-independent series expansions in the electric and magnetic theories. We further demonstrate that truncations of these series expansions to modest order yield very accurate approximations to these quantities and suggest possible implications for nonsupersymmetric theories.