String Webs and the Decay of Supersymmetric Particles

Abstract

The spectrum of stable electrically and magnetically charged supersymmetric particles can change discontinuously due to the decay of these particles as the vacuum on the Coulomb branch is varied. We show that this decay process is well described by semi-classical field configurations purely in terms of the low energy effective action on the Coulomb branch even when it occurs at strong coupling. The resulting picture of the stable supersymmetric spectrum is a generalization of the ``string web'' picture of these states found in string constructions of certain theories.