ar X iv : h ep - t h / 96 06 10 3 v 1 1 7 Ju n 19 96 1 Renormalization Flow , Duality , and Supersymmetry Breaking in Some N = 1 Product - Group

Duality, which relates the strongly coupled behavior of one gauge theory to the weakly coupled behavior of another, has emerged as a key idea in the understanding of the nonperturbative dynamics of supersymmetric gauge theories. Most of the work in this context has focused on gauge theories with simple gauge groups. One would like to understand theories with non-simple groups in more detail: i. Such an investigation will serve as a nontrivial check of simple-group duality. Gauging a global symmetry in two theories related by Seiberg duality is often a relevant perturbation, and the equivalence of the resulting two theories will give further evidence for duality. ii. Product groups often arise in the course of dualizing theories with simple groups, once one goes beyond the simplest matter representations. iii. Many phenomenologically interesting chiral gauge theories have product gauge groups. iv. Several classes of product-group theories exhibit dynamical supersymmetry breaking.