A Comparative Study of Criticality Conditions for Anomalous Dimensions using Exact Results in an ${\cal N}=1$ Supersymmetric Gauge Theory

Abstract

Two of the conditions that have been suggested to determine the lower boundary of the conformal window in asymptotically free gauge theories are the linear condition, $\gamma_{\bar\psi\psi,IR}=1$, and the quadratic condition, $\gamma_{\bar\psi\psi,IR}(2-\gamma_{\bar\psi\psi,IR})=1$, where $\gamma_{\bar\psi\psi,IR}$ is the anomalous dimension of the operator $\bar\psi\psi$ at an infrared fixed point in a theory. We compare these conditions as applied to an ${\cal N}=1$ supersymmetric gauge theory with gauge group $G$ and $N_f$ pairs of massless chiral superfields $\Phi$ and $\tilde \Phi$ transforming according to the respective representations ${\cal R}$ and $\bar {\cal R}$ of $G$. We use the fact that $\gamma_{\bar\psi\psi,IR}$ and the value $N_f = N_{f,cr}$ at the lower boundary of the conformal window are both known exactly for this theory. In contrast to the case with a non-supersymmetric gauge theory, here we find that in higher-order calculations, the linear condition provides a more accurate determination of $N_{f,cr}$ than the quadratic condition when both are calculated to the same finite order of truncation in a scheme-independent expansion.