Applications of the Superconformal Index for Protected Operators and q-Hypergeometric Identities to N=1 Dual Theories

Understand

The results of Romelsberger for a N=1 superconformal index counting protected operators, satisfying a BPS condition and which cannot be combined to form long multiplets, are analysed further.

• The index is expressible in terms of single particle superconformal characters for N=1 scalar and vector multiplets.
• For SQCD, involving SU(N_c) gauge groups and appropriate numbers of flavours N_f, the formula used to construct the index may be proved to give identical results for theories linked by Seiberg duality using recently proved theorems for q-series elliptic hypergeometric integrals.
• The discussion is also extended to Kutasov-Schwimmer dual theories in the large N_c, N_f limit and to dual theories with Sp(N) and SO(N) gauge groups.