F-maximization along the RG flows: a proposal

Understand

We propose an extension of the F-maximization principle to take into account the effects of non-superconformality.

• Guided by a four-dimensional analog, we formulate a modification of the free energy via the Lagrange multiplier technique.
• We conjecture that the Lagrange multiplier plays the same role as the coupling constant, at least at weak coupling.
• We check our proposal in many examples with unitary, symplectic and orthogonal gauge groups.