The many faces of the heterotic vortex

We address the problem of non-Abelian super-QCD, with a Fayet-Iliopoulos term, as seen from the vortex worldsheet perspective. Together with the FI term ξ, also a mass μ for the adjoint superfield Φ enters into the game. This mass allows the interpolation between N=2 and N= 1 super-QCD. We distinguish, inside the parameter space spanned by ξ and , four different corners where some quantitative statements can be made. We focus on two questions: 1) Is the quantum vortex BPS or non-BPS? 2) What is the phase of the internal non-Abelian moduli? We find that the answer to these questions depends upon the choice of the linear term in the superpotential. We then address the problem of multiple non-Abelian vortices, in the presence of the N = 1 deformation. We show that the tension of the "Abelian" vortex is not affected by the heterotic deformation, and in particular it remains BPS-saturated when is also switched on. © 2010 World Scientific Publishing Company.