Softly broken SQCD: in the continuum, on the lattice, on the brane

Abstract

We review progress in studying the solutions of SQCD in the presence of explicit, soft SUSY breaking terms. Massive N = 1 SQCD in the presece of a small gaugino mass leads to a controlled solution which has interesting phase structure with changing θ angle reminiscent of the QCD chiral Lagrangian. Current attempts to test the solutions of pure glue SQCD on the lattice require a theoretical understandinf of the theory with small gaugino mass in order to understand the approach to the SUSY point. We provide such a description making predictions for the gaugino condensate and lightest bound state masses. Finally we briefly review recent D-brane constructions of 4D gauge theories in string theory including a non-supersymmetric configuration. We identify this configuration with softly broken N = 2 SQCD.