Metastable vacua in perturbed Seiberg-Witten theories

Abstract

We show that, for a generic choice of a point on the Coulomb branch of any N = 2 supersymmetric gauge theory, it is possible to find a superpotential perturbation which generates a metastable vacuum at the point. For theories with SU(N) gauge group, such a superpotential can be expressed as a sum of single-trace terms for N = 2 and 3. If the metastable point is chosen at the origin of the moduli space, we can show that the superpotential can be a single-trace operator for any N. In both cases, the superpotential is a polynomial of degree 3N of the vector multiplet scalar field. © 2008 International Press.