Electric-magnetic duality, monopole condensation, and confinement in N=2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory

N. Seiberg; E. Witten

doi:10.1016/0550-3213(94)90124-4

Electric-magnetic duality, monopole condensation, and confinement in N=2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory

N. Seiberg, E. Witten

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Abstract

We study the vacuum structure and don spectrum of N=2 supersymmetric gauge theory in four dimensions, with gauge group SU(2). The theory turns out to have remarkably rich and physical properties which can nonetheless be described precisely; exact formulas can be obtained, for instance, for electron and dyon masses and the metric on the moduli space of vacua. The description involves a version of Olive-Montonen electric-magnetic duality. The "strongly coupled" vacuum turns out to be a weakly coupled theory of monopoles, and with a suitable perturbation confinement is described by monopole condensation.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	19-52
Number of pages	34
Journal	Nuclear Physics, Section B
Volume	426
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/0550-3213(94)90124-4
State	Published - Sep 5 1994
Externally published	Yes

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

Nuclear and High Energy Physics

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10.1016/0550-3213(94)90124-4

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title = "Electric-magnetic duality, monopole condensation, and confinement in N=2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory",

abstract = "We study the vacuum structure and don spectrum of N=2 supersymmetric gauge theory in four dimensions, with gauge group SU(2). The theory turns out to have remarkably rich and physical properties which can nonetheless be described precisely; exact formulas can be obtained, for instance, for electron and dyon masses and the metric on the moduli space of vacua. The description involves a version of Olive-Montonen electric-magnetic duality. The {"}strongly coupled{"} vacuum turns out to be a weakly coupled theory of monopoles, and with a suitable perturbation confinement is described by monopole condensation.",

author = "N. Seiberg and E. Witten",

note = "Funding Information: We would like to thank T. Banks for a useful discussion on confinement and condensation of magnetic monopoles, P. Deligne for some conceptual assistance, G. Moore for suggesting a possible role of hypergeometric functions, and C. Vafa for explaining certain two-dimensional results. We have also benefited from discussions with K. Intriligator, R. Leigh and S. Shenker. This work was supported in part by DOE grant #DE-FGO5-90ER40559 and in part by NSF grant PHY92-45317.",

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doi = "10.1016/0550-3213(94)90124-4",

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T1 - Electric-magnetic duality, monopole condensation, and confinement in N=2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory

AU - Seiberg, N.

AU - Witten, E.

N1 - Funding Information: We would like to thank T. Banks for a useful discussion on confinement and condensation of magnetic monopoles, P. Deligne for some conceptual assistance, G. Moore for suggesting a possible role of hypergeometric functions, and C. Vafa for explaining certain two-dimensional results. We have also benefited from discussions with K. Intriligator, R. Leigh and S. Shenker. This work was supported in part by DOE grant #DE-FGO5-90ER40559 and in part by NSF grant PHY92-45317.

PY - 1994/9/5

Y1 - 1994/9/5

N2 - We study the vacuum structure and don spectrum of N=2 supersymmetric gauge theory in four dimensions, with gauge group SU(2). The theory turns out to have remarkably rich and physical properties which can nonetheless be described precisely; exact formulas can be obtained, for instance, for electron and dyon masses and the metric on the moduli space of vacua. The description involves a version of Olive-Montonen electric-magnetic duality. The "strongly coupled" vacuum turns out to be a weakly coupled theory of monopoles, and with a suitable perturbation confinement is described by monopole condensation.

AB - We study the vacuum structure and don spectrum of N=2 supersymmetric gauge theory in four dimensions, with gauge group SU(2). The theory turns out to have remarkably rich and physical properties which can nonetheless be described precisely; exact formulas can be obtained, for instance, for electron and dyon masses and the metric on the moduli space of vacua. The description involves a version of Olive-Montonen electric-magnetic duality. The "strongly coupled" vacuum turns out to be a weakly coupled theory of monopoles, and with a suitable perturbation confinement is described by monopole condensation.

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Electric-magnetic duality, monopole condensation, and confinement in N=2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory

Abstract

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