Non-supersymmetric cousins of supersymmetric gauge theories: quantum space of parameters and double scaling limits

Abstract

I point out that standard two dimensional, asymptotically free, non-linear sigma models, supplemented with terms giving a mass to the would-be Goldstone bosons, share many properties with four dimensional supersymmetric gauge theories, and are tractable even in the non-supersymmetric cases. The space of mass parameters gets quantum corrections analogous to what was found on the moduli space of the supersymmetric gauge theories. I focus on a simple purely bosonic example exhibiting many interesting phenomena: massless solitons and bound states, Argyres-Douglas-like CFTs and duality in the infrared, and rearrangement of the spectrum of stable states from weak to strong coupling. At the singularities on the space of parameters, the model can be described by a continuous theory of randomly branched polymers, which is defined beyond perturbation theory by taking an appropriate double scaling limit.