On the Coulomb Branch of a Marginal Deformation of N=4 SUSY Yang-Mills

We determine the exact vacuum structure of a marginal deformation of N=4 SUSY Yang-Mills with gauge group U(N). The Coulomb branch of the theory consists of several sub-branches which are governed by complex curves of the form Sigma_{n_{1}} U Sigma_{n_{2}} U Sigma_{n_{3}} of genus N=n_{1}+n_{2}+n_{3}. Each sub-branch intersects with a family of Higgs and Confining branches permuted by SL(2,Z) transformations. We determine the curve by solving a related matrix model in the planar limit according to the prescription of Dijkgraaf and Vafa, and also by explicit instanton calculations using a form of localization on the instanton moduli space. We find that Sigma_{n} coincides with the spectral curve of the n-body Ruijsenaars-Schneider system. Our results imply that the theory on each sub-branch is holomorphically equivalent to certain five-dimensional gauge theory with eight supercharges. This equivalence also implies the existence of novel confining branches in five dimensions.Comment: LaTeX file. 48 page

An Elliptic Superpotential for Softly Broken N=4 Supersymmetric Yang-Mills Theory

An exact superpotential is derived for the N=1 theories which arise as massive deformations of N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills (SYM) theory. The superpotential of the SU(N) theory formulated on R^{3}\times S^{1} is shown to coincide with the complexified potential of the N-body elliptic Calogero-Moser Hamiltonian. This superpotential reproduces the vacuum structure predicted by Donagi and Witten for the corresponding four-dimensional theory and also transforms covariantly under the S-duality group of N=4 SYM. The analysis yields exact formulae with interesting modular properties for the condensates of gauge-invariant chiral operators in the four-dimensional theory.Comment: 34 pages, LaTeX. Minor corrections and an additional referenc

Exact Superpotentials from Matrix Models

Dijkgraaf and Vafa (DV) have conjectured that the exact superpotential for a large class of N=1 SUSY gauge theories can be extracted from the planar limit of a certain holomorphic matrix integral. We test their proposal against existing knowledge for a family of deformations of N=4 SUSY Yang-Mills theory involving an arbitrary polynomial superpotential for one of the three adjoint chiral superfields. Specifically, we compare the DV prediction for these models with earlier results based on the connection between SUSY gauge theories and integrable systems. We find complete agreement between the two approaches. In particular we show how the DV proposal allows the extraction of the exact eigenvalues of the adjoint scalar in the confining vacuum and hence computes all related condensates of the finite-N gauge theory. We extend these results to include Leigh-Strassler deformations of the N=4 theory.Comment: 28 pages, 1 figure, latex with JHEP.cls, replaced with typos corrected and one clarifying commen

N=1* vacua, Fuzzy Spheres and Integrable Systems

We calculate the exact eigenvalues of the adjoint scalar fields in the massive vacua of N=1* SUSY Yang-Mills with gauge group SU(N). This provides a field theory prediction for the distribution of D3 brane charge in the AdS dual. We verify the proposal of Polchinski and Strassler that the D3-brane's lie on a fuzzy sphere in the supergravity limit and determine the corrections to this distribution due to worldsheet and quantum effects. The calculation also provides several new results concerning the equilibrium configurations of the N-body Calogero-Moser Hamiltonian.Comment: 20 page