RENORMALIZATION GROUP AND DYNAMICS OF SUPERSYMMETRIC GAUGE THEORIES K. KONISHI Dipartimento di Fisica, Universit`adi Pisa, INFN, Sezione di Pisa, Via Buonarroti, 2, Ed. B 56127 Pisa, Italy E-mail:
[email protected] We discuss questions related to renormalization group and to nonperturbative as- pects of non-Abelian gauge theories with N = 2 and/or N = 1 supersymmetry. Results on perturbative and nonperturbative β functions of these theories are re- viewed, and new mechanisms of confinement and dynamical symmetry breaking recently found in a class of SU(nc), USp(2nc) and SO(nc) theories are discussed. 1 Introduction We start with a brief review on the NSVZ β functions in N = 1 supersymmetric gauge theories and related issues. 1.1 NSVZ β function in N =1 supersymmetric gauge theories The bare Lagrangian of an N = 1 supersymmetric gauge theory with generic matter content is given by 1 1 L = d2θ W aW a + h.c. + d4θ Φ†e2Vi Φ (1) 4 g2(M) i i i Z Z X where 1 1 θ(M) τ(M) = + i i (2) g2(M) g2(M) 8π2 ≡ 4π and g(M) and θ(M) stand for the bare coupling constant and vacuum parameter, arXiv:hep-th/0012122v1 14 Dec 2000 M being the ultraviolet cutoff. Note that with this convention the vector fields Aµ(x) and the gaugino (gluino) fields λα(x) contain the coupling constant and hence, in accordance with the non Abelian gauge symmetry, are not renormalized. By a generalized nonrenormalization theorem 2 the effective Lagrangian at scale µ takes the form, 1 1 b M L = d2θ + 0 log W aW a + h.c.