On RG potentials in Yang-Mills theories

Abstract

We construct an RG potential for N =2 supersymmetric SU (2) Yang-Mills theory, and extract a positive definite metric by comparing its gradient with the recently discovered beta-function for this system, thus proving that the RG flow is gradient in this four-dimensional field theory. We also discuss how this flow might change after supersymmetry breaking, provided the quantum symmetry group does not, emphasizing the non-trivial problem of asymptotic matching of automorphic functions to perturbation theory.