The moduli space of vacua of N = 2 SUSY QCD and duality in N = 1 SUSY QCD

Abstract We analyze in detail the moduli space of vacua of N = 2 SUSY QCD with n c colors and n f flavors. The Coulomb branch has submanifolds with non-Abelian gauge symmetry. The massless quarks and gluons at these vacua are smoothly connected to the underlying elementary quarks and gluons. Upon breaking N = 2 by an N = 1 preserving mass term for the adjoint field the theory flows to N = 1 SUSY QCD. Some of the massless quarks and gluons on the moduli space of the N = 2 theory become the magnetic quarks and gluons of the N = 1 theory. In this way we derive the duality in N = 1 SUSY QCD by identifying its crucial building blocks — the magnetic degrees of freedom — using only semiclassical physics and the non-renormalization theorem.