New dynamics and dualities in supersymmetric chiral gauge theories

Abstract

We analyze the phase structure of supersymmetric chiral gauge theories with gauge group SU(N), an antisymmetric, and F<N+4 flavors, in the presence of a cubic superpotential. When F=N+3 the theory flows to a superconformal fixed point in the infrared, and new dual descriptions of this theory are uncovered. The theory with odd N admits a self-dual magnetic description. For general N, we find an infinite family of magnetic dual descriptions, characterized by arbitrarily large gauge groups and additional classical global symmetries that are truncated by nonperturbative effects. The infrared dynamics of these theories are analyzed using a-maximization, which supports the claim that all these theories flow to the same superconformal fixed point. A very rich phase structure is found when the number of flavors is reduced below N+3, including a new self-dual point, transitions from conformal to confining, and a nonperturbative instability for F<N+1. We also give examples of chiral theories with antisymmetrics that have nonchiral duals.