An introduction to N=2 gauge theories.

Abstract: I will review the work of Seiberg and Witten (hep-th/9407087v1) on the exact solution of N=2 gauge theories. In the first lecture I will shortly review basic supersymmetry and introduce the Wilsonian low energy effective action for the pure N=2 Yang-Mills theory. It will appear that all the information is encoded in the holomorphic prepotential. The prepotential is not globally defined but it is rather defined locally (patchwise) around singular points in the moduli space of the theory. In the second lecture we will see how to determine the prepotential in each patch by gluing together the local expansions in a globally consistent way.

There are several excellent reviews on the subject, see for example: hep-th/9701069, hep-th/9611190, hep-th/9601007.


David's lecture will focus on "N=2 Seiberg-Witten theory from the M-theory fivebrane". This is the topic will provide the connection to the more recent developments in N=2 by Gaiotto et al.