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

N. Seiberg, E. Witten

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

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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 languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)19-52
Number of pages34
JournalNuclear Physics, Section B
Volume426
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 5 1994
Externally publishedYes

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Nuclear and High Energy Physics

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