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Recently, questions have been raised about the role of Lorentz invariance in false vacuum decay. It has been argued that infinities may arise in an integration over Lorentz-boosted final states. This suggestion motivates a Minkowski-space analysis of the decay rate. We attempt to illuminate features of the amplitude computation, and argue that the total rate including excitations is both finite and Lorentz invariant., Comment: 23 pages

We discuss constraints from cosmology on the models with direct gauge mediation based on the ISS supersymmetry breaking models. It is a generic feature that the ISS models possess a U(1) symmetry which is eventually spontaneously broken, when the models are based on the gauge symmetries with complex representations. We show that the resultant pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson causes problems in cosmology, which leads to severe constraints on the models. We also show that most parameter space of the models can be probed by observing gravitational waves emitted from the cosmic string network when the U(1) symmetry is a gauge symmetry., Comment: 30 pages, 3 figures

We revisit two longstanding puzzles in supersymmetric gauge theories. The first concerns the question of the holomorphy of the coupling, and related to this the possible definition of an exact (NSVZ) beta function. The second concerns instantons in pure gluodynamics, which appear to give sensible, exact results for certain correlation functions, which nonetheless differ from those obtained using systematic weak coupling expansions. For the first question, we extend an earlier proposal of Arkani-Hamed and Murayama, showing that if their regulated action is written suitably, the holomorphy of the couplings is manifest, and it is easy to determine the renormalization scheme for which the NSVZ formula holds. This scheme, however, is seen to be one of an infinite class of schemes, each leading to an exact beta function; the NSVZ scheme, while simple, is not selected by any compelling physical consideration. For the second question, we explain why the instanton computation in the pure supersymmetric gauge theory is not reliable, even at short distances. The semiclassical expansion about the instanton is purely formal; if infrared divergences appear, they spoil arguments based on holomorphy. We demonstrate that infrared divergences do not occur in the perturbation expansion about the instanton, but explain that there is no reason to think this captures all contributions from the sector with unit topological charge. That one expects additional contributions is illustrated by dilute gas corrections. These are infrared divergent, and so difficult to define, but if non-zero give order one, holomorphic, corrections to the leading result. Exploiting an earlier analysis of Davies et al, we demonstrate that in the theory compactified on a circle of radius beta, due to infrared effects, finite contributions indeed arise which are not visible in the formal limit that beta goes to infinity., Comment: 28 pages, two references added, one typo corrected

We present a string theory construction of a gravity dual of a spatially modulated phase. In our earlier work, we showed that the Chern-Simons term in the 5-dimensional Maxwell theory destabilizes the Reissner-Nordstrom black holes in anti-de Sitter space if the Chern-Simons coupling is sufficiently high. In this paper, we show that a similar instability is realized on the worldvolume of 8-branes in the Sakai-Sugimoto model in the quark-gluon plasma phase. We also construct and analyze a non-linear solution describing the end-point of the transition. Our result suggests a new spatially modulated phase in quark-gluon plasma when the baryon density is above 0.8 N_f fm^{-3} at temperature 150 MeV., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures

In the previous paper [arXiv:0911.0679], we showed that the Reissner-Nordstrom black hole in the 5-dimensional anti-de Sitter space coupled to the Maxwell theory with the Chern-Simons term is unstable when the Chern-Simons coupling is sufficiently large. In the dual conformal field theory, the instability suggests a spatially modulated phase transition. In this paper, we construct and analyze non-linear solutions which describe the end-point of this phase transition. In the limit where the Chern-Simons coupling is large, we find that the phase transition is of the second order with the mean field critical exponent. However, the dispersion relation with the Van Hove singularity enhances quantum corrections in the bulk, and we argue that this changes the order of the phase transition from the second to the first. We compute linear response functions in the non-linear solution and find an infinite off-diagonal DC conductivity in the new phase., Comment: 21 pages, 22 figures. v2: a note and a reference added

We show that the five-dimensional Maxwell theory with the Chern-Simons term is tachyonic in the presence of a constant electric field. When coupled to gravity, a sufficiently large Chern-Simons coupling causes instability of the Reissner-Nordstrom black holes in anti-de Sitter space. The instability happens only at non-vanishing momenta, suggesting a spatially modulated phase in the holographically dual quantum field theory in 3+1 dimensions, with spontaneous current generation in a helical configuration. The three-charge extremal black hole in the type IIB superstring theory on AdS_5 x S^5 barely satisfies the stability condition., Comment: 29 pages, 6 figures v2: references added

We construct M-theory supergravity solutions with the non-relativistic Schrodinger symmetry starting from the warped AdS_5 metric with N=1 supersymmetry. We impose the condition that the lightlike direction is compact by making it a non-trivial U(1) bundle over the compact space. Sufficient conditions for such solutions are analyzed. The solutions have two supercharges for generic values of parameters, but the number of supercharges increases to six in some special cases. A Schrodinger geometry with SU(2)xSU(2)xU(1) isometry is considered as a specific example. We consider the Kaluza-Klein modes and show that the non-relativistic particle number is bounded above by the quantum numbers of the compact space., Comment: 25 parges; v2: references added

We show that baryon-like operators exist in the N=6 superconformal Chern-Simons-matter theory constructed by Aharony, Bergman, Jafferis and Maldacena (ABJM). This involves the introduction of Wilson(or 't Hooft) lines ending on baryon-like operators and we show that the presence of such lines cannot be detected by the fields in the theory. The same construction can be used to make magnetic monopoles charged under the diagonal U(1) gauge group with arbitrary non-integral charge. If we do not include such monopole configurations in the path integral, the moduli space is known to be given by the symmetric N copies of C^4/Z_k. However, if we allow for such monopole configurations, the flux quantization conditions change so that we do not have a discrete gauge symmetry and effectively the (SU(N)xSU(N))/Z_N gauge theory remains. We discuss the possibility of the level-rank duality of the theory., Comment: 19 pages, 3 figures; v2: references added; v3: comments added in the introduction and discussion; v4: a footnote added in p.6

We show that there are two supersymmetric completions of the three-dimensional Chern-Simons theory of level k with gauge group U(N)xU(N) coupled to four sets of massless scalars and spinors in the bi-fundamental representation, if we require Sp(2) global symmetry with the matter fields in the fundamental representation of SU(4). One is the N=6 superconformal theory recently studied in arXiv:0806.1218 [hep-th] and another is a new theory with N=1 superconformal symmetry. We conjecture that the N=1 theory is dual to M theory on AdS_4 x Squashed S^7/Z_k., Comment: 16 pages; v2: references added

In the gauge mediation mechanism, the effects of the hidden sector are characterized by a set of correlation functions of the global symmetry current of the hidden sector. We present methods to compute these correlators in cases with strongly coupled hidden sectors. Several examples are presented to demonstrate the technique explicitly., Comment: 20 pages, 1 figure

We show that the perturbation of an N=2 supersymmetric gauge theory by a superpotential linear in the Kahler normal coordinates of the Coulomb branch, discussed in arXiv:0704.3613, is equivalent to the perturbation by Fayet-Iliopoulos terms. It follows that the would-be meta-stable vacuum at the origin of the normal coordinates in fact preserves N=1 supersymmetry unless the superpotential is truncated to a finite-degree polynomial of the adjoint scalar fields. We examine the criteria for supersymmetry breaking under a perturbation by Fayet-Iliopoulos terms and present a general classification of non-supersymmetric critical points. In some explicit examples, we are also able to study local stability of these points and demonstrate that, if the perturbation is chosen appropriately, they indeed correspond to supersymmetry-breaking vacua. Relations of these constructions to flux compactifications and geometric meta-stability are also discussed., Comment: 25 pages

We show that, for a generic choice of a point on the Coulomb branch of any N=2 supersymmetric gauge theory, it is possible to find a superpotential perturbation which generates a metastable vacuum at the point. For theories with SU(N) gauge group, such a superpotential can be expressed as a sum of single-trace terms for N=2 and 3. If the metastable point is chosen at the origin of the moduli space, we can show that the superpotential can be a single-trace operator for any N. In both cases, the superpotential is a polynomial of degree 3N of the vector multiplet scalar field., Comment: 22 pages, 4 figures; adding chiral ring arguments in appendix B.1