Periods and Prepotential of N=2 SU(2) Supersymmetric Yang-Mills Theory with Massive Hypermultiplets

Abstract

We derive a simple formula for the periods associated with the low energy effective action of $N=2$ supersymmetric $SU(2)$ Yang-Mills theory with massive $N_f\le 3$ hypermultiplets. This is given by evaluating explicitly the integral associated to the elliptic curve using various identities of hypergeometric functions. Following this formalism, we can calculate the prepotential with massive hypermultiplets both in the weak coupling region and in the strong coupling region. In particular, we show how the Higgs field and its dual field are expressed as generalized hypergeometric functions when the theory has a conformal point.