Degenerate Domain Walls in Supersymmetric Theories

Abstract

In supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories (SYM) tension-degenerate domain walls are typical. Adding matter fields in fundamental representation we arrive at supersymmetric QCD (SQCD) supporting similar walls. We demonstrate that the degenerate domain walls can belong to one of two classes: (i) locally distinguishable, i.e. those which differ from each other locally (which could be detected in local measurements); and (ii) those which have identical local structure and are differentiated only topologically, through a judicially chosen compactification of $\mathbb{R}^4$. Depending on the number of flavors $F$ and the pattern of Higgsing both classes can coexists among SQCD $k$ walls interpolating between the vacua $n$ and $n+k$. We prove that the overall multiplicity of the domain walls obtained after accounting for both classes is $ν_{N,k}^\text{walls}= N!/\big[(N-k)!k!\big]$, as was discovered previously in limiting cases. (Here $N$ is the number of colors.) Thus, $ν_{N,k}^\text{walls}$ is a peculiar index. For the locally distinguishable degenerate domain walls we observe two-wall junctions, a phenomenon specific for supersymmetry with central extensions. This phenomenon does not exist for topological replicas.