SEZIONE DI FIRENZE
Ciclo di Lezioni di Riccaro Argurio (Université Libre de Bruxelles) The lectures assume basic knowledge of SUSY QFT, in superspace and superfield notation. The aim is to review some formal aspects of non-perturbative SUSY QFTs which have wide applications to many problems in theoretical physics. The lectures will start reviewing N=1 SUSY gauge theories and their basic properties, such as non-renormalization theorems (both in perturbation theory and at the non-perturbative level), chiral primaries and classical moduli spaces. We will then focus on SYM and SQCD to investigate the many different low-energy behaviors that such theories can have at the exact quantu m level. Using holomorphy and global symmetries (including the anomalous ones), we will construct the effective superpotentials for such theories. For SYM, one can derive the presence of a gaugino condensate. For SQCD, it depends on the number of flavors. The outcome can be one of the following options: the non-existence of a stable SUSY vacuum; confinement with or without chiral symmetry breaking; an IR free theory; a superconformal fixed point. In the latter case we will discuss how the same fixed point can have two different descriptions, related by Seiberg duality. Dynamical (non-perturbative) SUSY breaking in a stable or metastable vacuum can also be discussed if time permits.

DATA: 03-11-2017