Theory HEP Seminar

Theta and Large N SQCD

Patrick Draper

UMass

The theta parameter of QCD and QCD-like theories is associated with a rich variety of physical phenomena, including the generation of mass for the eta prime, monodromy in the vacuum energy, the spontaneous breaking of parity, and others. Some of the physics of theta, particularly in theories with light quarks, is well-understood, while other aspects remain (highly plausible) conjectures. Supersymmetric QCD is in many ways a simpler relative of QCD in which the theta dependence is easier to access. In the first part of the talk, I will discuss ways in which SQCD reflects the conjectured behavior of nonsupersymmetric QCD at large N, and other ways in which it does not. In the second part, I will discuss axion monodromy inflation, for which large N SQCD provides a well-controlled toy model.