Gluino condensate and magnetic monopoles in supersymmetric gluodynamics Original Research Article

We examine supersymmetric SU(N) gauge theories on R3 × S1 with a circle of circumference β. These theories interpolate between four-dimensional N = 1 pure gauge theory for β = ∞ and three-dimensional N = 2 gauge theory for β = 0. The dominant field configurations of the R3 × S1 SU(N) theories in the semi-classical regime arise from N varieties of monopole. Periodic instanton configurations correspond to mixed configurations of N single monopoles of the N different types. We semi-classically evaluate the non-perturbatively generated superpotential of the R3 × S1 theory and hence determine its vacuum structure. to the gluino condensate in these theories and take the decompactification limit β = ∞. In this way we obtain a value for the gluino condensate in the four-dimensional N = 1 supersymmetric SU(N) Yang-Mills theory, which agrees with the previously known ‘weak coupling’ expression but not with the ‘strong coupling’ expression derived in the early literature solely from instanton considerations. Moreover, we discover that the superpotential gives a mass to the dual (magnetic) photon, which implies confinement of the original electric photon and disappearance of all the massless modes.