Analysis of Ward identities in supersymmetric Yang–Mills theory

Abstract

Abstract In numerical investigations of supersymmetric Yang–Mills theory on a lattice, the supersymmetric Ward identities are valuable for finding the critical value of the hopping parameter and for examining the size of supersymmetry breaking by the lattice discretisation. In this article we present an improved method for the numerical analysis of supersymmetric Ward identities, which takes into account the correlations between the various observables involved. We present the first complete analysis of supersymmetric Ward identities in $$\mathcal {N}=1$$ N=1 supersymmetric Yang–Mills theory with gauge group SU(3). The results indicate that lattice artefacts scale to zero as $$O(a^2)$$ O(a2) towards the continuum limit in agreement with theoretical expectations.