Introduction to Rigid Supersymmetric Theories

Abstract

In these lectures we discuss the supersymmetry algebra and its irreducible representations. We construct the theories of rigid supersymmetry and gave their superspace formulations. The perturbative quantum properties of the extended supersymmetric theories are derived, including the superconformal invariance of a large class of these theories. We also discuss flat directions, non-holomorphicity and the perturbative chiral effective action for N=2 Yang-Mills theory. The superconformal transformations in four dimensional superspace are derived and encoded into one superconformal Killing superfield. It is shown that the anomalous dimensions of chiral operators in a superconformal quantum field are related to their $R$ weight.