Effective action of the N = 2 Maxwell multiplet in harmonic superspace

• Published in: Physics letters. B Vol. 412; no. 3; pp. 309 - 319
• Main Authors: Buchbinder, I.L., Buchbinder, E.I., Ivanov, E.A., Kuzenko, S.M., Ovrut, B.A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 30-10-1997
• ISSN: 0370-2693; 1873-2445
• DOI: 10.1016/S0370-2693(97)01025-3

We present, in the
N = 2,
D = 4 harmonic superspace formalism, a general method for constructing the off-shell effective action of an
N = 2 abelian gauge superfield coupled to matter hypermultiplets. Using manifestly
N = 2 supersymmetric harmonic supergraph techniques, we calculate the low-energy corrections to the renormalized one-loop effective action in terms of
N = 2 (anti)chiral superfield strengths. For a harmonic gauge prepotential with vanishing vacuum expectation value, corresponding to massless hypermultiplets, the only non-trivial radiative corrections to appear are non-holomorphic. For a prepotential with non-zero vacuum value, which breaks the
U(1)-factor in the
N = 2 supersymmetry automorphism group and corresponds to massive hypermultiplets, only non-trivial holomorphic [Bcorrections arise at leading order. These holomorphic contribution are consistent with Seiberg's quantum correction to the effective action, while the first non-holomorphic contribution in the massless case is the
N = 2 supersymmetrization of the Heisenberg-Euler effective Lagrangian.