An anomalous breaking of supersymmetry in supersymmetric gauge theories with local coupling

Abstract

We extend the gauge coupling of super-Yang–Mills theories to an external real superfield composed out of a chiral and an antichiral superfield and perform renormalization in the extended model. In one-loop order we find an anomalous breaking of supersymmetry which vanishes in the limit to constant coupling. The anomaly arises from nonlocal contributions and its coefficient is gauge and scheme independent and strictly of one-loop order. In the perturbative framework of the construction the anomaly cannot be absorbed as a counterterm to the classical action. With local gauge coupling the symmetric counterterms with chiral integration are holomorphic functions and this property is independent from the specific regularization scheme. Thus, the symmetric counterterm to the Yang–Mills part is of one-loop order only—and it is the anomaly which gives rise to the two-loop order of the gauge β-function in pure super-Yang–Mills theories and to its closed all-order expression.