Extended superspace, higher derivatives and SL(2, Z) duality

Abstract

We consider the low-energy effective action for the Coulomb phase of an $N = 2$ supersymmetric gauge theory with a rank one gauge group. The $N = 2$ superspace formalism is naturally invariant under an $SL(2, {\bf Z})$ group of duality transformations, regardless of the form of the action. The leading and next to leading terms in the long distance expansion of the action are given by the holomorphic prepotential and a real analytic function respectively. The latter is shown to be modular invariant with respect to $SL(2, {\bf Z})$.