Duality in Supersymmetric Yang-Mills Theory

The course is based on M. Peskin's review hep-th/9702094.

Abstract: These lectures provide an introduction to the behavior of strongly-coupled supersymmetric gauge theories. After a discussion of the effective Lagrangian in nonsupersymmetric and supersymmetric field theories, the qualitative behavior of the simplest illustrative models will be analyzed. These include supersymmetric QCD for $N_f < N_c$, in which the superpotential is generated nonperturbatively, N=2 SU(2) Yang-Mills theory (the Seiberg-Witten model), in which the nonperturbative behavior of the effective coupling is described geometrically, and supersymmetric QCD for N_f large, in which the theory illustrates a non-Abelian generalization of electric-magnetic duality.

The course will end with one lecture providing an introduction to Instantons in Supersymmetric Yang-Mills Theory.