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# Quantitative analysis of the first-principles effective-Hamiltonian approach to ferroelectric perovskites

## I INTRODUCTION

First-principles methods constitute a powerful tool for the study of ferroelectric systems. van97  Ground state structures, phonons, spontaneous polarization, and related properties, including piezoelectric and dielectric tensors, have been accurately calculated for a wide variety of perovskite oxides as well as other ferroelectric compounds.

Despite advances in algorithms and computer hardware, the direct calculation of finite temperature behavior, particularly phase transitions, is still far beyond reach, as such calculations involve thousands of atoms. However, indirect methods have been developed and applied to a large number of systems, including BaTiO3zho94 ; zho95a ; tin99  PbTiO3wag97  and KNbO3sep97 ; kra99  and even solid solutions like Pb(ZrxTi1-x)O3bel00 ; leu02  Pb(Sc0.5Nb0.5)O3hem01  and K(NbxTa1-x)O3sep02  In Refs. tin99, , sep97, , and sep02, , interatomic “shell-model” potentials were parametrized by fitting to first-principles results, and finite-temperature behavior studied by direct simulation of atomistic systems with forces and energies obtained from these potentials. The results in Refs. zho94, ; zho95a, ; wag97, , and kra99, ; bel00, ; leu02, ; hem01,  were obtained by an effective Hamiltonian construction in which the full system is mapped by a subspace projection onto a statistical mechanical model, with parameters determined from first-principles calculations of total energies for small distortions of an ideal crystal with the cubic perovskite structure. The simple form of the resulting effective Hamiltonian allows very-large-scale simulations and aids in the conceptual interpretation of the results. The two approaches have achieved comparable success in reproducing many essential features of the phase transitions of ferroelectrics. For example, for BaTiO3zho94 ; zho95a ; tin99  the experimentally observed cubic–tetragonal–orthorhombic–rhombohedral phase sequence is correctly reproduced. However, while the experimental values of the transition temperatures are 403, 278, and 183 K, classical Monte-Carlo simulations of the first-principles effective Hamiltonian give 300, 230, and 200 K, while the shell-model results are 210, 135 and 100K, respectively. In both cases a correction for the local-density approximation (LDA) lattice constant underestimate was included in the model.

Understanding the origin of this discrepancy with experiment may help in the development of improved theoretical methods for the calculation of finite temperature behavior. Here, we focus our attention on the first-principles effective Hamiltonian approach. The discrepancies in the transition temperatures could result from separate errors introduced at various steps of the analysis. We correspondingly classify the errors into five types. Errors in the configuration energies obtained from first-principles calculations will be designated Type I. These generally can be systematically reduced, with the exception of the uncontrolled approximation in the exchange-correlation functional required for the practical implementation of density functional theory (“LDA error”). Type II errors result from the identification of the relevant degrees of freedom and the projection and approximate representation of the effective Hamiltonian in the corresponding subspace, and will be the main focus of our investigation. Errors in the statistical-mechanical simulations (Type III) include finite-size effects and sampling errors. In the effective Hamiltonian studies to date, it has been feasible to make these errors relatively negligible. The importance of Type IV errors, resulting from the classical treatment of the ions neglecting quantum fluctuations, has been highlighted in a recent study of BaTiO3 by Íñiguez and Vanderbilt. ini02  The results of this study indicate that the classical approximation raises the transition temperatures. Thus, this is not the origin of the underestimate for BaTiO3. In fact, a correct, fully quantum-mechanical treatment would increase, not decrease, the transition-temperature discrepancy. Finally, we note that the experimental samples, even in thermodynamic equilibrium, contain defects and local nonstoichiometry which lead to deviations of observed properties from those of the assumed ideal crystals (Type V errors). These crystal imperfections can have various effects on the transition temperatures that are in general difficult to model.

To separate and quantify the role of the various errors in producing the observed discrepancies in transition temperatures, several different approaches could be applied. The analysis of Type III and Type IV errors has been discussed in the previous paragraph. One way to investigate Type I errors would be completely to redo the effective Hamiltonian study replacing the LDA with a generalized-gradient approximation (GGA). However, the latter has not been found to give systematic improvement in the overall agreement of calculated properties with experiment, gga  and thus the value of such a labor-intensive investigation is unclear. In principle, Type II errors could be eliminated by comparing the effective-Hamiltonian transition temperatures with those obtained in a fully ab-initio molecular dynamics or Monte Carlo calculation. However, as noted above, doing this type of direct calculation for sufficiently large systems is so computationally demanding that it is impossible in practice even for benchmarking purposes, and calculations for small supercells and with reduced sampling would introduce significant finite-size and statistical errors.

In this paper we develop and carry out an alternative method of isolating and quantifying Type II errors, allowing us to discuss possible refinements of the effective Hamiltonian method to reduce or eliminate them. We use the total energies computed with the BaTiO3 “shell model” interatomic potential of Tinte et al. tin99  to construct an effective Hamiltonian, and compare the computed transition temperatures with those obtained in direct classical simulations for the “shell model” system. In this comparison, we completely eliminate errors of Types I, IV and V, and can easily make errors of Type III negligible. Thus, we can attribute any discrepancies directly to errors of Type II. While such errors will not be quantitatively identical to the corresponding errors made in the construction of the effective Hamiltonian directly from ab-initio results, the general accuracy and physical faithfulness of the shell model interatomic potential to BaTiO3 should render conclusions based on this analysis quite meaningful.

The paper is organized as follows. Section II provides technical details of the BaTiO3 shell-model interatomic potential of Tinte et al. that serves as our reference system. In Sec. III we describe the construction of the effective Hamiltonian and the parameters obtained by fitting to the shell model, paying special attention to the approximations and technicalities involved. In Section IV we present the results obtained from the effective-Hamiltonian and shell-model classical statistical-mechanical simulations. The discrepancies are analyzed in Section V, and possible improvements on the various effective-Hamiltonian approximations are discussed. Section VI is devoted to the specific issue of modeling the thermal expansion within the effective-Hamiltonian approach. Finally, in Section VII we present a discussion of the broader implications of our analysis; in particular, we speculate on the relative importance of errors of Types I, II, and IV in the first-principles effective-Hamiltonian treatments currently in the literature.

## II Shell-model interatomic potential

Of the various types of interatomic potentials, shell models are uniquely well suited to giving a good description of the lattice dynamics of perovskite oxides. The form of the shell-model potential developed for BaTiO3 in Ref. tin99,  incorporates earlier observations that the oxygen shell-core interaction should be nonlinear and anisotropic.bilz ; lewiscatlow  Each ion (Ba, Ti or O) is modeled as a massive core linked to a massless shell. The core-shell interactions for Ba and Ti are harmonic and isotropic. An anisotropic core-shell interaction is considered at the O-2 ions, with a fourth-order core-shell interaction along the O-Ti bond. In addition to the Coulomb interactions between ion cores and shells, the model contains pairwise short-range inter-shell potentials of the Buckingham type, i.e., $`V(r)=a\mathrm{exp}(r/\rho )c/r^6`$. The Born-Mayer form ($`c=0`$) is sufficient for the Ti-O and Ba-O short-range potential, while for the O-O potential the value of $`c`$ is nonzero. The physically important nonlinearities of the interatomic interactions are thus naturally incorporated into the form of the potential.

The material-specific parameters in the interatomic potential were determined by adjusting them to fit selected first-principles results computed using the linearized augmented planewave (LAPW) method. It should be noted, however, that the equilibrium lattice constant of the cubic phase is fitted to the experimental cubic-phase lattice constant extrapolated to 0 K (3.995 Å), not the LAPW lattice constant. The double wells for polar distortions along (001), (011), and (111) are satisfactorily reproduced, as are the phonon dispersion curves for the cubic structure at the experimental lattice constant. The bulk modulus of the cubic phase and the anomalous Born effective charges are also in good agreement with the first-principles results. Reference tin99,  contains further details about the construction of the interatomic potential and values of the parameters.

Finite-temperature properties of the system described by this interatomic potential are investigated by constant-pressure molecular dynamics (MD) simulations using the DL-POLY package, dlpoly  where the adiabatic dynamics of the electronic shells are approximated by assigning small masses to them. A Hoover constant-($`\overline{\sigma }`$,T) algorithm with external stress set to zero is employed; all cell lengths and cell angles are allowed to fluctuate. The time step is 0.4 fs and the total time of each simulation, after 2 ps of thermalization, is 20 ps. Results for a 7$`\times `$7$`\times `$7 periodic supercell (1715 ions plus 1715 shells which are additional degrees of freedom) were reported in Ref. tin99, . It was shown that the cubic–tetragonal–orthorhombic–rhombohedral phase sequence is correctly reproduced. Good agreement with experimental data was obtained for the structural parameters in the various phases as well as the volume thermal expansion coefficient, showing that the most important nonlinearities have been included in the model. However, the transition temperatures are rather low compared to experiment (190, 120, and 90 K). This discrepancy does not affect the present analysis of Type II errors. In the present work, we have expanded the supercell to 10$`\times `$10$`\times `$10 primitive cells (10000 degrees of freedom). This yields essentially the same results, except that the calculated transition temperatures increase slightly (210, 135, and 100 K). Additional MD simulations were performed at constant volume, using a modified Hoover constant-($`\overline{\sigma }`$,T) algorithm that allows for fluctuations in the cell shape.

## III Construction of the effective Hamiltonian

In this Section we describe the effective Hamiltonian that we have constructed using the shell model for BaTiO3 of Tinte et al.tin99  as our target system. The form of the effective Hamiltonian is identical to that proposed by Zhong et al.,zho95a  except that the inhomogeneous strain variables found to be unimportant in that study are not included here.

An effective Hamiltonian is a Taylor expansion of the energy surface of the system around a high-symmetry phase in terms of a set of relevant degrees of freedom. For ferroelectric perovskites, the most convenient reference structure is the cubic paraelectric phase. The relevant degrees of freedom can be identified by studying the energy changes induced by small (harmonic) perturbations of the reference structure. The low-energy, typically unstable, distortions are the relevant ones, and are expressed in the form of local modes or lattice Wannier functions. rab95  The relevant local modes are those that add up to produce the distorted ferroelectric ground-state structure. Also, we take the homogeneous strains as relevant and include them in the Hamiltonian.

There are two possible ways of performing the harmonic analysis that leads to the identification and calculation of the relevant lattice Wannier functions. One can study either the force-constant matrix (the matrix of second derivatives of the energy with respect to atomic displacements) or the corresponding dynamical matrix. While the former choice leads to a better description of the lowest-energy states of the system, the latter provides a kinetic decoupling between the relevant and irrelevant (i.e., not considered in the Hamiltonian) degrees of freedom. Here we have worked with the force-constant matrix, which is more appropriate for the study of equilibrium properties. In any case, we find numerically that the force-constant and dynamical matrix descriptions are essentially identical.

Once a relevant set of phonon branches fn:phonon  has been identified, the calculation of the corresponding lattice Wannier functions can be done at different levels of approximation. At the crudest level, they can be constructed from phonons at a single $`k`$ point, zho95a  more sophisticated schemes allowing for better descriptions of the relevant phonons throughout the Brillouin zone. rab95 ; ini00  Here, we calculate the local modes from the unstable phonons at $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ (these generate the ferroelectric structure) choosing the local modes to be centered on the Ti atom. The resulting local modes reproduce the unstable phonons at zone-boundary points M and R with an accuracy above 97%. We thus do not expect a better local-mode definition to constitute a significant improvement of our effective Hamiltonian of shell-model BaTiO3.

Let $`u_{i\alpha }`$ denote the local mode amplitude in unit cell $`i`$ along Cartesian direction $`\alpha `$. Let $`\eta _l`$ denote the strains, where $`l`$ is a Voigt index. Our effective Hamiltonian can then be written as

$`H_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ $`=E^{\mathrm{self}}[u_{i\alpha }^2;u_{i\alpha }^2u_{i\beta }^2]+E^{\mathrm{dpl}}[u_{i\alpha }u_{j\beta }]+`$ (1)
$`E^{\mathrm{short}}[u_{i\alpha }u_{j\beta }]+E^{\mathrm{elas}}[\eta _l\eta _m]+E^{\mathrm{int}}[\eta _lu_{i\alpha }u_{i\beta }].`$
Following Ref. zho95a, , we have written the effective Hamiltonian as the sum of four terms: the on-site self-energy of the local modes $`E^{\mathrm{self}}`$, the long-range dipole-dipole interactions between local modes $`E^{\mathrm{dpl}}`$, the short-range interactions between local modes $`E^{\mathrm{short}}`$, the elastic energy $`E^{\mathrm{elas}}`$, and the interaction between local modes and strains $`E^{\mathrm{int}}`$. The dependence of each term on the model variables is indicated in Eq. (1). It should be noted that the form of the Hamiltonian is greatly simplified by the cubic symmetry of the reference structure. For example, there are no odd terms in $`u_{i\alpha }`$.

The relevant phonon branches are described by the harmonic terms in $`E^{\mathrm{self}}`$, $`E^{\mathrm{dpl}}`$, and $`E^{\mathrm{short}}`$. Anharmonic terms for the local modes, required to stabilize the low-symmetry phases, are included only in $`E^{\mathrm{self}}`$ (the “local-anharmonicity approximation”). In both $`E^{\mathrm{elas}}`$ and $`E^{\mathrm{int}}`$ only the lowest-order terms in the expansion are considered. This constitutes the minimal microscopic model for the description of ferroelectricity in BaTiO3. Including higher-order terms in the Hamiltonian would constitute a systematic improvement of the model.

As already mentioned, the Hamiltonian we have just described is essentially that of Ref. zho95a, , except the parameters were fitted to a series of shell-model calculations of total energies and forces, instead of ab-initio results, for a set of distorted structures. Following the notation of Ref. zho95a, , we list in Table 1 the parameters defining our effective Hamiltonian for shell-model BaTiO3.

Monte Carlo (MC) simulations were performed to calculate the finite-temperature properties of the Hamiltonian. We simulated a 10$`\times `$10$`\times `$10 supercell with periodic boundary conditions, and typically did 30,000 MC sweeps to equilibrate the system and 50,000 sweeps more to obtain averages of local-mode variables with a statistical error below $`10\%`$. The temperature was increased in small steps of 5 K. We monitored the behavior of the homogeneous strain and the vector order parameter to identify the transitions. The average local-mode vector is proportional to the polarization. Note that, unless it is indicated, the MC simulations for the present effective Hamiltonian are performed at zero external pressure.

## IV Finite-temperature results

Figure 1a shows the three components of the mean polarization as a function of temperature as obtained from the MC simulations of the effective Hamiltonian, while Fig. 1b shows the corresponding results obtained directly from the shell-model MD simulations. It is apparent that the effective Hamiltonian correctly reproduces the sequence of transitions (cubic to tetragonal to orthorhombic to rhombohedral with decreasing $`T`$). However, the agreement is far from perfect for the $`T_\mathrm{c}`$ values, listed in Table 2. Clearly the effective Hamiltonian underestimates the $`T_\mathrm{c}`$’s, especially for the C–T transition where the transition temperature is too low by $``$30%.

This shows that for an effective Hamiltonian of this form, Type II errors are quite significant, and in fact are comparable to the discrepancies found when comparing BaTiO3 ab-initio effective-Hamiltonian results against experimental measurements on real BaTiO3 samples. This strongly suggests that errors in first-principles calculations account for at most only part of the latter discrepancy. In the following, we will investigate the Type II errors in more detail and identify approaches to systematic reduction of these errors, returning to the discussion of first-principles effective Hamiltonians in Sec. VII.

## V Analysis of sources of the discrepancies

In this Section, we analyze three sources of error in the construction of the effective Hamiltonian that could possibly lead to the calculated underestimates of the $`T_\mathrm{c}`$ values. First, we focus on the specification of the ferroelectric mode unit vector, which determines the precise set of degrees of freedom described by the effective Hamiltonian. Second, we consider the effect of the truncation of the Taylor expansion in the specified degrees of freedom, with particular attention to the neglect of certain higher-order couplings within the effective Hamiltonian subspace. Third, we consider the consequences of omitting the higher-frequency phonon branches from the effective Hamiltonian.

### V.1 Specification of ferroelectric local mode vector

One of the first choices that was made in the construction of the effective Hamiltonian was the detailed specification of the ferroelectric local mode vector. As explained in Sec. III, we chose a Ti-centered displacement pattern selected in such a way that a uniform superposition of these local mode displacements gives a periodic displacement pattern corresponding to the unstable (ferroelectric) mode eigenvector of the force-constant matrix in the cubic structure. This is only one of many possible approaches, and questions may arise as to whether this is the best choice and how much difference it would make if we had made a different choice.

One way of addressing these questions is to test how completely the chosen local mode vectors span the space of distortions that are actually encountered in the full atomistic finite-temperature shell-model simulation. We projected the shell-model MD trajectories at a given temperature onto the 12 optical zone-center normal modes (i.e., force-constant eigenvectors) of the cubic phase (four sets of three-fold degenerate modes). As expected, we found that the mode branches included in our effective Hamiltonian subspace account for almost all ($``$90%) of the observed atomic displacements. This suggests that the approximation of keeping only these modes in the effective Hamiltonian is a good one.

A second approach is to try a different procedure for defining the identity of the local mode vector. In particular, one could think of a construction designed to optimize the description in the neighborhood of the ferroelectric ground state. For instance, the local mode vector could be fitted to the ground state of the system that is obtained when the atomic positions are fully relaxed. Such a procedure would effectively incorporate the effect of the anharmonic couplings between included and excluded modes while not increasing the number of variables considered in the model. In order to quantify the effect of this change, we assume that this alternative local mode definition mainly affects the anharmonic parameters in

$$E^{\mathrm{self}}=\kappa _2u_i^2+\alpha u_i^4+\gamma (u_{ix}^2u_{iy}^2+u_{iy}^2u_{iz}^2+u_{ix}^2u_{iz}^2).$$
(2)
We thus recalculated $`\alpha `$ and $`\gamma `$ exactly to reproduce the energy of the fully relaxed tetragonal energy minimum, and to get the best compromise for the energies of the orthorhombic and rhombohedral minima. By “fully relaxed” we mean that the atomic positions were allowed to relax with the cell constrained to be the equilibrium cubic cell; this is consistent with the fact that we did not recalculate any mode-strain coupling parameter. The new $`\alpha `$ and $`\gamma `$ are 0.811 and $``$0.916 a.u. respectively, which are very similar to the values in Table 1. The smallness of the correction reflects the fact that the fully relaxed energy minima are very close to those described by the original effective Hamiltonian, the differences being of the order of 0.01 mHa. Keeping all other parameters unchanged, we repeated the MC simulations at finite temperature and found that the transition temperatures of the T–O and O–R transitions (see Table 2) are sensitive to these small changes in parameter values, giving a 10% improvement compared with our original effective Hamiltonian. However, the large discrepancy in the C–T transition temperature is unchanged.

We therefore conclude that a change in the definition of the local-mode displacement pattern is unlikely to be sufficient to eliminate the discrepancy between the effective-Hamiltonian and shell-model results. It is necessary, therefore, to look elsewhere. Nevertheless, the results do show that the details of the fitting procedure can have a significant effect on the transition temperatures.

### V.2 Neglect of higher-order terms in the Taylor expansion

We now return to our initial choice of relevant degrees of freedom, and ask whether the corresponding energy landscape is sufficiently well described by the truncated Taylor expansion that defines the effective Hamiltonian. The quadratic elastic energy $`E^{\mathrm{elas}}`$ is easily checked to be accurate. The dipole-dipole interactions in $`E^{\mathrm{dpl}}`$ will be harmonic as long as the local polarization is linear in the atomic displacements, and this approximation is valid for BaTiO3. The terms that require further consideration are $`E^{\mathrm{self}}`$, $`E^{\mathrm{short}}`$, and $`E^{\mathrm{int}}`$.

Higher-order terms in $`E^{\mathrm{self}}`$ should aim at a better description of the double-well potentials associated with the ferroelectric instabilities. We checked, however, that including sixth- and eighth-order terms does not improve the fit significantly. In particular, the well depths, which are the effective-Hamiltonian feature most directly related to the value of the transition temperatures, are very well reproduced by the quartic $`E^{\mathrm{self}}`$. A more accurate description would yield energy wells around 1% shallower, which would probably lead to a very tiny decrease in the C–T transition temperature.

Higher-order terms in $`E^{\mathrm{short}}`$ represent anharmonic couplings between neighboring local modes and would provide a correction to the local-anharmonicity approximation. One can fit such terms by looking at the double-well potentials associated with the antiferroelectric instabilities of shell-model BaTiO3 at zone-boundary points X and M. The fourth-order terms associated with such wells will be a combination of the parameters $`\alpha `$ and $`\gamma `$ in Eq. 2 and the new quartic parameters in $`E^{\mathrm{short}}`$. However, we find that these new quartic parameters are very small and can be safely neglected. More precisely, they constitute 0.05% and 5% of the total fourth-order term for the X and M instabilities, respectively, and result in slightly-deeper zone-boundary energy wells. Their probable effect is a minor decrease in the transition temperatures, because of an enhanced competition between zone-center and zone-boundary instabilities.

One could think of improving on $`E^{\mathrm{short}}`$ by including couplings between further neighbors (following Ref. zho95a, , we included couplings up to third neighbors in our Hamiltonian). This would allow us to improve the description of the dispersion branches of the relevant modes throughout the Brillouin zone. However, we checked that if our Hamiltonian is fitted including couplings only up to second neighbors the transition temperatures change by less than 10 K. Hence, we can assume our Hamiltonian is well converged in this respect.

Finally, the description of the interaction between strain and local modes can be improved by including more terms in $`E^{\mathrm{int}}`$. In particular, we have found that the $`\eta _1u_{ix}^4`$ term is not negligible and would modify the effective Hamiltonian so as to yield higher transition temperatures. Specifically, we find that the coefficient of the $`\eta _1u_{ix}^4`$ term is negative and would thus favor a state in which the system polarizes and expands along a Cartesian direction. However, in the next section we will see that the main Type II error has a different origin, and so we leave explicit consideration of this correction for future work.

### V.3 Effect of excluded modes: thermal expansion

Finally, we consider the original decision to reduce the number of degrees of freedom in the effective Hamiltonian to one vector degree of freedom per cell to represent ferroelectric distortions. Even if an optimal set of local-mode variables is chosen (Sec. V A) and all necessary terms in the Taylor expansion are kept (Sec. V B), there still may be errors associated with this fundamental approximation. For example, anharmonic couplings between included and excluded modes are neglected, as are anharmonic couplings between excluded modes and of excluded modes to strain.

The effects of neglecting these anharmonic couplings are clearly seen in the thermal expansion. In fact, in raising the temperature from 0 to 300 K in our simulations, we find that the volume of the shell-model system increases by 0.4%, while that of the effective-Hamiltonian system decreases by 0.6%. This indicates that the effective Hamiltonian treatment of the thermal expansion is qualitatively incorrect. Moreover, given the well-known sensitivities of the transition temperatures to volume, this effect could be substantial. Moreover, it correctly predicts that we would underestimate transition temperatures, since they are reduced at smaller lattice constants.

To check whether the thermal expansion effect is responsible for the dominant errors in $`T_\mathrm{c}`$, we made the following test. We completely eliminated the volume effect by carrying out both simulations at a fixed volume of (4.012 Å)3. Using the shell model, we have found $`T_\mathrm{c}`$ values of 190, 130, and 95 K, while the corresponding effective-Hamiltonian values are 180, 125, and 100 K, respectively. The error in the C–T transition temperature, which was around 60 K in the zero-pressure simulations, is reduced to $``$10 K.

### V.4 Summary

We thus arrive at the important conclusion that the poor description of thermal expansion effects is the dominant source of error in the effective-Hamiltonian description. These shortcomings in the description of thermal expansion, and some preliminary attempts to correct for them, will be described in the following Section. Smaller errors (probably amounting to no more than 5-10% of the $`T_\mathrm{c}`$ values) are associated with the other approximations discussed in Subsecs. V A-B.

## VI Improved treatment of thermal expansion

Given the conclusion of Sec. V.D, we are strongly motivated to improve the effective-Hamiltonian treatment of thermal expansion. First, we investigate the thermal expansion in more detail. Figure 2 shows the pseudocubic lattice parameter $`a=V^{1/3}`$ as a function of temperature as predicted by the shell model (full circles) and by the effective Hamiltonian (full triangles). Both models exhibit volume anomalies (“kinks”) at the ferroelectric phase transition temperatures, indicative of their first-order character. However, the overall trends in volume vs. temperature are quite different.

The thermal expansion displayed by the shell model, after a proper rescaling of temperature and cell parameter, closely resembles that of real BaTiO3shi52  This virtue of the model is related to the fact that it includes all the degrees of freedom of the system and a sufficiently accurate description of their relevant anharmonicities. The effective Hamiltonian, on the other hand, does not properly account for the thermal expansion of the system, and actually leads to a contraction with increasing temperature in the range of the polar phases. The reason for such a contraction is that the volume is strongly coupled to the magnitude of the local dipoles and, as these tend to decrease with increasing temperature as the paraelectric phase is approached, the volume tends to decrease as well. Equivalently, the thermal contraction can be attributed to negative Grüneisen parameters associated with portions of the relevant branches; these are overwhelmed by positive contributions from higher modes in the shell-model system, but not in the effective-Hamiltonian system where the higher modes are absent.

We next ask what happens if the effective-Hamiltonian simulations are carried out with a cell volume that is constrained ‘by hand’ to have the correct dependence on temperature as given by the shell-model system. A simple way of doing this in practice is to apply a (negative) external pressure $`p_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ to the effective-Hamiltonian system; this fictitious pressure can be thought of as arising from the thermal expansion effects of the excluded modes. We implement this approximately by taking $`p_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ to be linear in temperature in such a way that the effective-Hamiltonian equilibrium volume coincides with the shell-model one at two temperatures, taken to be 10 and 300 K, bracketing the relevant range. We then find that $`p_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ is required to be $`1.8`$ GPa at 300 K while almost vanishing at 10 K. The results of MC simulations under this external pressure are presented in Fig. 2 (open squares); the values of the transition temperatures are listed in Table 2. The improvement in the agreement with the shell-model calculations, in particular in the case of the C–T transition temperature, is remarkable.

However, such an ad-hoc approach is not consistent with the spirit of first-principles based approaches; one would prefer a way to calculate the effective pressure $`p_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ ab-initio. We have attempted to do so by employing the so-called quasiharmonic approximation (see Chapter 25 of Ref. ashc, ). Within this approximation, the pressure that develops in a harmonic crystal with volume-dependent phonon frequencies is (see Eq. (25.5) of Ref. ashc, )

$`p`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{}{V}}\left(U^{\mathrm{eq}}+{\displaystyle \underset{𝐤s}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{}w_s(𝐤)\right)`$ (3)
$`+{\displaystyle \underset{𝐤s}{}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{(\mathrm{}w_s(𝐤))}{V}}\right){\displaystyle \frac{1}{e^{\beta \mathrm{}w_s(𝐤)}1}},`$
where $`U^{\mathrm{eq}}`$ is the equilibrium energy of the system, $`\omega _s(𝐤)`$ is the phonon frequency of branch $`s`$ at point $`𝐤`$ of the Brillouin zone (BZ), and the summations run over all branches and $`𝐤`$ points. Now the pressure exerted by the excluded modes is obtained from Eq. (3) by removing $`U^{\mathrm{eq}}`$ and restricting the sums to the excluded modes $`s^{}`$. Taking the classical limit $`\mathrm{}0`$ in order to compare with the classical shell model, $`p_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ takes the form

$$p_{\mathrm{eff}}=k_BT\frac{}{V}\left(\underset{𝐤s^{^{}}}{}\mathrm{ln}\omega _s^{^{}}(𝐤)\right)$$
(4)
which is linear in temperature and proportional to the volume derivative of the phonon frequencies.

We must be cautious about the approximations involved in the use of Eq. (4) or its quantum-mechanical version. The quasiharmonic approach is not really well suited to deal with phase transitions, which are strongly anharmonic phenomena. Using it in the present context relies on the assumption that the excluded modes (more precisely, the volume derivatives of their frequencies) are not significantly affected by the strong fluctuations and phase transitions associated with the relevant local modes.

In order to assess the utility of the quasiharmonic approach here, we have focused on the cubic-to-tetragonal transition and calculated $`p_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ using the volume dependences of the excluded-mode frequencies in the cubic paraelectric phase.w  We find that the BZ sum in Eq. (4) can be evaluated with good accuracy using information from the high-symmetry k-points only, and that the sum of logarithms of the hard-mode frequencies depends linearly with volume in the relevant volume range, thus allowing us to take $`p_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ as independent of volume. The $`p_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ calculated in this way shows improved agreement with the exact shell-model results as regards both the transition temperatures (denoted by “computed $`p_{\mathrm{eff}}`$” in Table 2) and the thermal expansion (open triangles in Fig. 2). However, the results are still far from satisfactory, with a substantial error remaining for the C–T transition temperature. These discrepancies are probably connected with the shortcomings of the quasiharmonic approximation discussed above. Further investigations along these lines are clearly needed, but fall beyond the scope of the present paper.

In summary, the proposed correction based on the quasiharmonic approximation of Eq. (4) accounts correctly for only a fraction (perhaps a third) of the thermal-expansion error. Unfortunately, then, we are not yet in a position to propose a fully ab initio approach to the thermal expansion problem in the context of effective-Hamiltonian methods.

## VII Conclusions

The main weakness of our effective-Hamiltonian description of shell-model BaTiO3 is the poor description of the thermal expansion. Focusing on the cubic to tetragonal transition temperature ($`T_{CT}`$), we have found that the effective Hamiltonian produces a 28$`\%`$ error, while we can estimate from our constant-volume calculations that this error should be reduced to 5$`\%`$ if the thermal expansion were properly modeled. We have also seen that including the thermal expansion ‘by hand’ allows us to reduce the error to about 12$`\%`$; in other words, this correction seems to account for 70$`\%`$ of the total error associated with the thermal expansion.

It is tempting to apply these same percentages in order to estimate the sources of error arising in the comparison of the first-principles effective Hamiltonian transition temperatures with real experiment. However, this should be done cautiously. For example, anharmonicities or thermal-expansion effects might either be exaggerated or underestimated by the shell model. With this in mind, we consider the effective-Hamiltonian study of BaTiO3 by Zhong et al. which led to $`T_{CT}=300`$ K, 25$`\%`$ below the experimental value of 400 K. This was a classical calculation; should quantum effects be considered, the calculated $`T_{CT}`$ would be smaller by about 30 K, ini02  and thus the error would go up to $``$30$`\%`$.

We performed classical MC simulations with the effective Hamiltonian of Zhong et al. including the thermal expansion of the system ‘by hand’ under the condition that the computed volume should coincide with the experimental one at $`T=473`$ K. This resulted in an error of 18$`\%`$ in $`T_{CT}`$, which would become $``$25$`\%`$ if we include the estimated quantum effects. Hence, it seems that the improvement in this case is not as large as it was for the effective Hamiltonian fitted to shell-model BaTiO3. If we follow what we have learned from the case of shell-model BaTiO3 and assume that including the thermal expansion ‘by hand’ corrects 70$`\%`$ of the total thermal-expansion error, we can estimate that a quantum first-principles effective-Hamiltonian calculation with perfect thermal expansion would still result in a 20$`\%`$ underestimate of $`T_{CT}`$. It seems reasonable to assume that Type II errors other than the thermal expansion, as well as details of the fitting procedure, are responsible for a further 5$`\%`$ error in $`T_{CT}`$. This suggests that a calculation free of Type II and Type IV errors would yield a $`T_{CT}`$ that would still be about 15% below experiment. While this line of reasoning is tenuous, we nevertheless believe it gives the best current estimate for the magnitude of the error that should be attributed to the first-principles methods used to construct the effective Hamiltonian (in particular, the LDA).

In summary, in this work we have analyzed the errors associated with the first-principles effective Hamiltonian method that has been developed for the treatment of the thermodynamics of perovskite ferroelectrics. More specifically, by considering the effective-Hamiltonian description of the shell-model for BaTiO3 of Tinte et al., we have been able to isolate and study in detail the errors intrinsic to the effective-Hamiltonian approximation (Type II errors). We have found that the main Type II error is associated with a poor description of the thermal expansion of the system. We have discussed an easily-implemented first-principles correction that takes into account some contributions of excluded modes. Unfortunately, this scheme seems to account for only about a third of the total thermal-expansion error. More elaborate schemes (involving a more thorough treatment of the couplings of the phonon modes to each other and to strain and polarization) might substantially reduce the error, but it remains for the future to explore and implement such schemes. Finally, we have argued that in the case of the comparison of the first-principles effective-Hamiltonian calculations on BaTiO3 with real experiment, Type II errors do not seem to be responsible for the entire discrepancy. Our results suggest that the Type I errors associated with the use of the LDA and other first-principles technicalities may be of the same magnitude as the thermal-expansion error.

This work was supported by the Center for Piezoelectrics by Design (CPD) under ONR Grant N00014-01-1-0365. Computational facilities for the work were also provided by the CPD. J.I. acknowledges the financial support of ONR Grant No. N0014-97-1-0048.


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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

One of the remarkable features of $`𝒩=4`$ supersymmetric quantum Yang-Mills theory is the opportunity to obtain exact results. At present, one can distinguish at least three trends in finding out exact solutions to some important quantities in this theory. These are, first, the study of low-energy effective action, second, computing the correlators of gauge invariant operators, and, third, computing the expectation values of Wilson loops (see - for a review and references).

In this paper we solve the open problem of calculating the exact low-energy effective action depending on all fields of $`𝒩=4`$ gauge multiplet. Until recently, the well established exact results for leading low-energy contributions to the effective action were obtained for $`SU(2)`$, $`𝒩=4`$ SYM model in Coulomb branch  and only for the $`𝒩=2`$ gauge multiplet sector of the effective action. These contributions are presented by a non-holomorphic effective potential of the form 111A possibility of non-holomorphic contributions having the form of product of two logarithms was earlier found in  for the effective action of a generic $`𝒩=2`$ SYM model.

$`(W,\overline{W})={\displaystyle \frac{1}{(4\pi )^2}}\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{W}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{\overline{W}}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}.`$ (1.1)
Here $`W`$ and $`\overline{W}`$ are the $`𝒩=2`$ $`U(1)`$ gauge superfield strengths and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is an arbitrary scale. It was pointed out in  that although the potential (1.1) was obtained in one-loop approximation, it receives neither perturbative nor non-perturbative corrections. Hence, the function $`(W,\overline{W})`$ (1.1) determines the exact low-energy effective action in the $`𝒩=2`$ gauge field sector (to be more precise, the leading in external momenta part of the full effective action).

A generalization of the effective potential (1.1) to the Coulomb branch of $`𝒩=4`$ SYM model with the gauge group $`SU(N)`$ broken to its Cartan subgroup $`U(1)^{N1}`$ has been given in  (see also the review ). Despite the fact that the one-loop non-holomorphic potential in this case looks quite analogous to (1.1), it was argued in  that the effective potential can contain, in principle, some extra non-logarithmic contributions (begining at least with fifth loop ) which do not have the product form (1.1). However, in the actual computations such contributions have never been found.

From the standpoint of $`𝒩=2`$ supersymmetry, the $`𝒩=4`$ gauge multiplet is a sum of $`𝒩=2`$ gauge multiplet and hypermultiplet. All the above mentioned results on the structure of non-holomorphic potential were obtained only for that part of the effective action which depends on the fields of $`𝒩=2`$ gauge multiplet. The problem of constructing the complete effective action depending on both the $`𝒩=2`$ gauge multiplet and hypermultiplet fields has been solved in a recent paper . The construction of  is based upon the purely algebraic analysis exploring the existence of extra hidden on-shell $`𝒩=2`$ supersymmetry in $`𝒩=4`$ SYM theory formulated in $`𝒩=2`$ harmonic superspace . The manifest off-shell $`𝒩=2`$ supersymmetry and the hidden one constitute the full on-shell $`𝒩=4`$ supersymmetry of $`𝒩=4`$ SYM theory. It was shown that the potential (1.1), as well as its generalization to $`SU(N)`$ model, can be completed to $`𝒩=4`$ supersymmetric form by adding the appropriate terms depending on hypermultiplet superfields. However, any non-logarithmic terms in the low-energy effective action do not admit such a completion and hence are ruled out by $`𝒩=4`$ supersymmetry. An open problem to remain was to re-derive the effective action of  by a direct supergraph computation in the quantum field theory framework. The present paper is devoted to solving this problem.

We specialize to the $`SU(2)`$ $`𝒩=4`$ SYM model formulated in harmonic superspace and consider its Coulomb branch. Since the effective potential (1.1) is generated solely by one-loop contributions, the corresponding hypermultiplet-dependent terms also have to be evaluated only in the one-loop approximation. We would like to point out that such a calculation is a very non-trivial problem. We have to calculate not just a contribution of single supergraph with a few external legs but the contributions of the supergraphs with arbitrary numbers of external legs on a background of non-zero $`W`$ and $`\overline{W}`$ and then to sum up all these contributions. We show that such calculations can be actually accomplished and the result yields just the effective action found in . A similar approach is used to give a new derivation of the one-loop non-holomorphic effective $`W,\overline{W}`$ potential. As the result we are aware of the unified approach allowing us to compute the low-energy effective action in both the gauge multiplet and hypermultiplet sectors. The calculations are carried out within the $`𝒩=2`$ background field method , with making use of the quantum $`𝒩=2`$ harmonic superfield techniques pioneered in  and further advanced in , .

The paper is organized as follows. In section 2 we recapitulate a formulation of $`𝒩=4`$ SYM theory in $`𝒩=2`$ harmonic superspace and describe a general structure of low-energy effective action in this theory. Section 3 presents details of calculating the hypermultiplet-dependent contributions to effective action. In section 4, using a similar approach, we perform a manifestly $`𝒩=2`$ supercovariant calculation of the non-holomorphic effective potential in the $`𝒩=2`$ gauge fields sector. The results are summarized in section 5.

## 2 $`𝒩=4`$ SYM theory in harmonic superspace and the problem of complete low-energy effective action

The ‘microscopic’ action of $`𝒩=4`$ $`SU(2)`$ SYM theory written in $`𝒩=2`$ harmonic superspace  reads

$`S={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2g^2}}\mathrm{tr}{\displaystyle d^8z𝒲^2}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{tr}{\displaystyle 𝑑\zeta ^{(4)}q^{+a}(D^{++}+iV^{++})q_a^+}.`$ (2.1)
Here $`q_a^+=(q^+,\stackrel{~}{q}^+)`$, $`q^{+a}=ϵ^{ab}q_b^+`$, is the hypermultiplet in the adjoint representation of the gauge group and $`𝒲`$ is the covariant strength of $`𝒩=2`$ analytic gauge superfield $`V^{++}`$. This action (i) is manifestly $`𝒩=2`$ supersymmetric; (ii) possesses a second hidden $`𝒩=2`$ supersymmetry completing the first one to $`𝒩=4`$. The off-shell $`𝒩=4`$ transformations for the full nonabelian case can be found in . 222To avoid a possible confusion we note that, though these hidden supersymmetry transformations can be defined for off-shell superfields, they form, together with the manifest $`𝒩=2`$ supersymmetry transformations, $`𝒩=4`$ Poincaré supersymmetry only on shell. For fixing the one-loop effective action it suffices to know them for the abelian $`U(1)`$ components of $`𝒲,q^{+a}`$ only (with all off-diagonal superfields neglected) and on the free mass shell for these $`U(1)`$ superfields :

$`\delta 𝒲`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\overline{ϵ}^{\dot{\alpha }a}\overline{D}_{\dot{\alpha }}^{}q_a^+,\delta \overline{𝒲}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}ϵ^{\alpha a}D_\alpha ^{}q_a^+,`$
$`\delta q_a^+`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}(ϵ_a^\beta D_\beta ^+𝒲+\overline{ϵ}_a^{\dot{\alpha }}\overline{D}_{\dot{\alpha }}^+\overline{𝒲}),\delta q_a^{}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}(ϵ_a^\beta D_\beta ^{}𝒲+\overline{ϵ}_a^{\dot{\alpha }}\overline{D}_{\dot{\alpha }}^{}\overline{𝒲}).`$ (2.2)
Here $`q^aD^{}q^{+a}`$, where $`D^{}`$ is the second harmonic derivative.

For calculating quantum corrections we use the background field method . We start with carrying out background-quantum splitting by the rule $`q^{+a}q^{+a}+Q^{+a};V^{++}V^{++}+gv^{++}`$. Here $`q^{+a}`$ is a background hypermultiplet and $`Q^{+a}`$ a quantum one; $`V^{++}`$ is a background $`𝒩=2`$ gauge superfield and $`v^{++}`$ a quantum one. For our purpose it suffices to retain in the action (2.1) only terms of the second order in quantum superfields:

$`S_2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{tr}{\displaystyle }d\zeta ^{(4)}[v^{++}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}v^{++}+Q^{+a}(D^{++}+iV^{++})Q_a^++`$ (2.3)
$`+`$ $`Q^{+a}(igv^{++})q_a^++q^{+a}(igv^{++})Q_a^+].`$
The operator $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}`$ includes background $`𝒩=2`$ superfield strengths $`𝒲,\overline{𝒲}`$, is defined to act in the adjoint representation of the gauge group and has the form :

$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{}+{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}(𝒟^{+\alpha }𝒲)𝒟_\alpha ^{}+{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}(\overline{𝒟}_{\dot{\alpha }}^+\overline{𝒲})\overline{𝒟}^{\dot{\alpha }}+{\displaystyle \frac{i}{8}}[𝒟^{+\alpha },𝒟_\alpha ^{}]𝒲`$ (2.4)
$``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{i}{4}}(𝒟^{+\alpha }𝒟_\alpha ^+)𝒲D^{}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\{𝒲,\overline{𝒲}\}.`$
The $`𝒩=4`$ SYM effective action in the Coulomb branch depends only on abelian background superfields $`𝒲,\overline{𝒲}`$, $`q^{+a}`$ which can be chosen to be on-shell, $`[𝒟^{+\alpha },𝒟_\alpha ^{}]𝒲=0`$,
$`(𝒟^{+\alpha }𝒟_\alpha ^+)𝒲=0`$, $`D^{++}q^{+a}=0`$ . Taking into account these conditions and the fact that all superfields are in the adjoint representation, we have

$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}v^{++}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{}v^{++}+{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}[𝒟^{+\alpha }𝒲,𝒟_\alpha ^{}v^{++}]+{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}[\overline{𝒟}^{+\dot{\alpha }}\overline{𝒲},\overline{𝒟}_{\dot{\alpha }}^{}v^{++}]+[𝒲,[\overline{𝒲},v^{++}]],`$
$`Q^{+a}v^{++}Q_a^+`$ $`=`$ $`Q^{+a}[v^{++},Q_a^+],\text{etc}.`$ (2.5)
The quantum fields $`v^{++}`$ with values in $`su(2)`$ can be written as

$`v^{++}=v_i^{++}\tau _i,`$ (2.6)
where $`\tau _i`$ are generators of $`su(2)`$ related to Pauli matrices $`\sigma _i`$ as

$`\tau _i={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}\sigma _i.`$ (2.7)
They satisfy the relations

$`[\tau _i,\tau _j]=i\sqrt{2}ϵ_{ijk}\tau _k,\mathrm{tr}(\tau _i\tau _j)=\delta _{ij}.`$ (2.8)
The procedure of calculation of quantum correction for the gauge group $`SU(N)`$ broken to $`U(1)`$ was developed in . The background $`𝒩=2`$ strengths are expanded as $`𝒲=𝒲_i\tau _i`$. We calculate the effective action in the Coulomb branch, in which it depends only on the background fields taking values in the unbroken $`u(1)`$. The latter corresponds to the restriction $`𝒲=𝒲_3\tau _3`$, further we denote $`𝒲_3`$ as $`W`$. Our first aim will be to derive the action (and hence, vertices and propagators) for fields $`v_i^{++},Q_i^{+a}`$. We also redefine $`gq^{+a}q^{+a}`$. For the Abelian background we have $`𝒟^{+\alpha }W=D^{+\alpha }W`$, $`\overline{𝒟}^{+\dot{\alpha }}\overline{W}=\overline{D}^{+\dot{\alpha }}\overline{W}`$, with $`D,\overline{D}`$ being flat spinor derivatives, and we can make these replacements in (2.4).

Thus the quadratic part of the action can be expressed as

$`S_2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle }d\zeta ^{(4)}\{v_i^{++}\mathrm{}v_j^{++}\mathrm{tr}(\tau _i\tau _j)+Q_i^{+a}D^{++}Q_{aj}^+\mathrm{tr}(\tau _i\tau _j)`$ (2.9)
$`+Q_i^{+a}(iV^{++})Q_{aj}^+\mathrm{tr}(\tau _i[\tau _3,\tau _j])+v_i^{++}W\overline{W}v_j^{++}\mathrm{tr}[\tau _i[\tau _3,[\tau _3,\tau _j]]`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}v_i^{++}(D^{+\alpha }W)𝒟_\alpha ^{}v_j^{++}\mathrm{tr}(\tau _i[\tau _3,\tau _j])+{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}v_i^{++}(\overline{D}^{+\dot{\alpha }}W)\overline{𝒟}_{\dot{\alpha }}^{}v_j^{++}\mathrm{tr}(\tau _i[\tau _3,\tau _j])`$
$`+iv_i^{++}(q^{+a}Q_{aj}^+\mathrm{tr}(\tau _3[\tau _i,\tau _j])+Q_{aj}^+q^{+a}\mathrm{tr}(\tau _i[\tau _j,\tau _3]))\}.`$
Using (2.7), we can do all traces. After this the expression (2.9) is rewritten as

$`S_2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle }d\zeta ^{(4)}\{v_1^{++}(\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W})v_1^{++}+v_2^{++}(\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W})v_2^{++}`$ (2.10)
$``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}v_1^{++}((D^{+\alpha }W)𝒟_\alpha ^{}+(\overline{D}^{+\dot{\alpha }}W)\overline{𝒟}_{\dot{\alpha }}^{})v_2^{++}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}v_2^{++}((D^{+\alpha }W)𝒟_\alpha ^{}+`$
$`+`$ $`(\overline{D}^{+\dot{\alpha }}W)\overline{𝒟}_{\dot{\alpha }}^{})v^{++}_1+v^{++}_3\mathrm{}v^{++}_3+Q^{+i}_3D^{++}Q^+_{i3}+`$
$`+Q_1^{+a}(D^{++}+i\sqrt{2}V^{++})Q_{a2}^+Q_2^{+a}(D^{++}+i\sqrt{2}V^{++})Q_{a1}^++`$
$`+iv_2^{++}\sqrt{2}(Q_1^{+a}q_a^++q_a^+Q_1^{+a})iv_1^{++}\sqrt{2}(Q_2^{+a}q_a^++q_a^+Q_2^{+a})\}.`$
From (2.10) we conclude that only the components carrying indices 1,2 have a non-trivial background-dependent propagator, while the quantum superfield components with index 3 do not interact with the background, totally decouple from the action and possess the free propagators. Then we can define new complex quantum fields

$`\chi ^{++}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}(v_1^{++}iv_2^{++}),\overline{\chi }^{++}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}(v_1^{++}+iv_2^{++}),`$
$`\eta ^{+i}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}(Q_1^{+i}+iQ_2^{+i}),\overline{\eta }^{+i}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}(Q_1^{+i}iQ_2^{+i}).`$ (2.11)
As a result, the action (2.10) takes the form

$`S_2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle }d\zeta ^{(4)}\{\overline{\chi }^{++}(\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}((D^{+\alpha }W)𝒟_\alpha ^{}+(\overline{D}^{+\dot{\alpha }}W)\overline{𝒟}_{\dot{\alpha }}^{})\chi ^{++}+`$
$`+`$ $`\overline{\eta }^{+i}(D^{++}\sqrt{2}V^{++})\eta _i^++{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}v_3^{++}\mathrm{}v_3^{++}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}Q_3^{+a}D^{++}Q_{a3}^++`$
$`+i\chi ^{++}\sqrt{2}q^{+a}\overline{\eta }_a^++i\overline{\chi }^{++}\sqrt{2}q^{+a}\eta _a^+)\}.`$
It is convenient to rewrite the action (2.10) as

$`S_2=S_0+V+\mathrm{},`$ (2.12)
where

$`S_0`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle }d\zeta ^{(4)}\{\overline{\chi }^{++}(\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}((D^{+\alpha }W)𝒟_\alpha ^{}+(\overline{D}^{+\dot{\alpha }}W)\overline{𝒟}_{\dot{\alpha }}^{})\chi ^{++}+`$ (2.13)
$`+`$ $`\overline{\eta }^{+i}(D^{++}\sqrt{2}V^{++})\eta _i^+\}`$
is the part that is used for defining propagators, and

$`V`$ $`=`$ $`i\sqrt{2}(\chi ^{++}q^{+a}\overline{\eta }_a^++\overline{\chi }^{++}q^{+a}\eta _a^+)`$ (2.14)
is the interaction term. Dots in (2) stand for the quadratic action of the decoupling fields $`Q_{i3}^+,v_3^{++}`$ which do not contribute to quantum corrections.

It is worth mentioning that for calculation of the effective action in the pure $`𝒩=2`$ SYM sector one must also take into account the third ghosts . Contributions of the third ghosts to effective action will be considered in Section 4. They do not contribute to the hypermultiplet-dependent quantum corrections computed in Section 3.

As the next step we introduce the operator

$`\underset{w}{\overset{}{\mathrm{}}}=\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}((D^{+\alpha }W)𝒟_\alpha ^{}+(\overline{D}^{+\dot{\alpha }}W)\overline{𝒟}_{\dot{\alpha }}^{})`$ (2.15)
which is obtained from $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}`$ (2.4) by retaining in the latter only the superfields $`W,\overline{W}`$ associated with the unbroken $`u(1)`$ and putting them on shell. Note that the action (2.13) is manifestly analytic like (2.3). As we shall see, while calculating the hypermultiplet-dependent contributions it suffices to consider only that part of $`\underset{w}{\overset{}{\mathrm{}}}`$ which does not contain derivatives of the background superfields $`W,\overline{W}`$. In what follows we shall use the notation $`\underset{w}{\overset{}{\mathrm{}}}=\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}`$, with hoping that this will not give rise to any confusion.

The background-dependent propagators for the superfields $`\chi ^{++},\overline{\chi }^{++},\overline{\eta }^{+\alpha },\eta _b^+`$ are then given by the expressions

$`<\overline{\chi }^{++}(z_1,u_1)\chi ^{++}(z_2,u_2)>`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_1)\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_2)}}`$
$`\times `$ $`(𝒟_1^+)^4(𝒟_2^+)^4\left\{\delta ^{12}(z_1z_2)(D_2^{})^2\delta ^{(2,2)}(u_1,u_2)\right\},`$
$`<\overline{\eta }^{+a}(z_1,u_1)\eta _b^+(z_2,u_2)>`$ $`=`$ $`i\delta _b^a{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(u_1^+u_2^+)^3}}{\displaystyle \frac{(𝒟_1^+)^4(𝒟_2^+)^4}{\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}}}\delta ^{12}(z_1z_2).`$ (2.16)
It is worth pointing out that the gauge superfield propagator $`<\overline{\chi }^{++}\chi ^{++}>`$ can be written in two equivalent forms . The form (2) is advantageous in that it is analytic with respect to both superspace arguments.

The exact one-loop non-holomorphic effective $`W,\overline{W}`$ potential in the model under consideration was found in . The hypermultiplet-dependent part of the effective action was restored in the recent paper . It was shown there by an algebraic analysis that the following expression

$`{\displaystyle d^{12}z[(W,\overline{W})+_q(W,\overline{W},q^+)]}`$ (2.17)
is invariant under the hidden $`𝒩=2`$ supersymmetry transformations (2) (and hence under $`𝒩=4`$ supersymmetry), if its hypermultiplet-dependent part has the form

$`_q(W,\overline{W},q^+)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{(4\pi )^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}c_n\left({\displaystyle \frac{q^{+a}q_a^{}}{W\overline{W}}}\right)^n,`$ (2.18)
with

$`c_n={\displaystyle \frac{(2)^n}{n^2(n+1)}}.`$ (2.19)
This sum converges to

$`_q(X)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(4\pi )^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{X}}[X(\mathrm{Li}_2(X)1)(1X)\mathrm{ln}(1X)],X2{\displaystyle \frac{q^{+a}q_a^{}}{W\overline{W}}},`$ (2.20)
where $`\mathrm{Li}_2(X)`$ is Euler dilogarithm . Our main purpose will be to show that the expression (2.18), (2.20) can be directly derived from the quantum harmonic formalism by summing up the appropriate sequence of the one-loop harmonic supergraphs.

## 3 Hypermultiplet-dependent contributions to effective action

The one-loop hypermultiplet-dependent contributions to the effective action are presented by the following infinite sequence of supergraphs:

$`+`$$`2`$$`1`$   $`+`$  $`3`$$`4`$$`2`$$`1`$   $`+`$   $`4`$$`5`$$`2`$$`1`$ $`3`$$`6`$        $`4`$$`6`$$`2`$$`8`$ $`3`$$`7`$$`5`$$`1`$ $`+`$$`\mathrm{}`$

Here the external and internal straight lines denote, respectively, external background hypermultiplets and quantum hypermultiplet propagators, and the wavy lines stand for the gauge superfield propagators. The numbers 1,2,$`\mathrm{}`$ mark harmonic arguments of the external hypermultiplets and vertices. We note that the whole dependence of the corresponding contributions on the external gauge superfield strengths $`W,\overline{W}`$ is already accounted for by the background-dependent propagators (2). This prevents one from considering ‘mixed’ supergraphs with both $`𝒩=2`$ gauge and hypermultiplet external legs. It is enough to consider only the supergraphs shown above.

A generic supergraph with $`2n`$ external lines can be viewed as a ring consisting of $`n`$ links of the form $`<\overline{\eta }^+\eta ^+><\chi ^{++}\overline{\chi }^{++}>`$ or $`n`$ links of the form $`<\eta ^+\overline{\eta }^+><\overline{\chi }^{++}\chi ^{++}>`$. For external superfields slowly varying in space-time the total contribution of these two kinds of the $`2n`$-point supergraph is given by the following general expression

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{2n}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4}{n}}{\displaystyle d^{12}z𝑑u_1\mathrm{}𝑑u_{2n}\frac{1}{\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_1)\stackrel{2}{\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}}(u_2)\mathrm{}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_{2n1})\stackrel{2}{\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}}(u_{2n})}}`$ (3.1)
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(𝒟^+(u_1))^4(𝒟^+(u_2))^4(D_2^{})^2\delta ^{(2,2)}(u_2,u_3)(𝒟^+(u_3))^4(𝒟^+(u_4))^4(D_4^{})^2\delta ^{(2,2)}(u_4,u_5)}{(u_1^+u_2^+)^3(u_3^+u_4^+)^3}}`$
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(𝒟^+(u_5))^4\mathrm{}(𝒟^+(u_{2n1}))^4(𝒟^+(u_{2n}))^4(D_{2n}^{})^2\delta ^{(2,2)}(u_{2n},u_1)}{(u_5^+u_6^+)^3(u_7^+u_8^+)^3\mathrm{}(u_{2n3}^+u_{2n2}^+)^3(u_{2n1}^+u_{2n}^+)^3}}\delta ^{12}(zz^{})|_{z=z^{}}`$
$`\times `$ $`q_a^+(u_1)q^{+a}(u_2)q_b^+(u_3)\mathrm{}q_c^+(u_{2n1})q^{+c}(u_{2n}).`$
Hereafter, the symbol $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}`$ stands for the operator defined by eq. (2.15). Since our aim consists in calculation of contribution depending only on $`q^+,W,\overline{W}`$ but not on their derivatives we can omit all the derivative-depending terms in $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}`$. The factor $`4/n`$ has the following origin. The contribution from the ring-type supergraph composed of $`n`$ repeating links
$`<\overline{\eta }^+\eta ^+><\chi ^{++}\overline{\chi }^{++}>`$ appears with the symmetry factor $`2/n`$. The same factor $`2/n`$ arises from the supergraph composed of $`n`$ repeating links $`<\eta ^+\overline{\eta }^+><\overline{\chi }^{++}\chi ^{++}>`$. Further, each vertex brings the factor $`i`$, every $`<\eta ^+\overline{\eta }^+>`$ and $`<\overline{\chi }^{++}\chi ^{++}>`$ propagators contribute the factors $`i`$ and $`i/2`$, respectively (hence total of $`n`$ links contributes $`2^n`$). Any vertex also carries the coefficient $`\sqrt{2}`$. This leads to the total factor $`2^n`$. Putting all these contributions together, we obtain just the coefficient $`4/n`$.

We calculate the expression (3.1) in the following way. It contains harmonic integrals of products of the expressions $`(𝒟^+(u_{2k}))^4(D_{2k}^{})^2\delta ^{(2,2)}(u_{2k},u_{2k+1})(𝒟^+(u_{2k+1}))^4`$, $`k=1,2\mathrm{}n`$ (with $`u_{2n+1}u_1`$). In every such term we use the identity $`(D_{2k}^{})^2\delta ^{(2,2)}(u_{2k},u_{2k+1})=(D_{2k+1}^{})^2\delta ^{(2,2)}(u_{2k},u_{2k+1})`$. Then, integrating by parts, we throw $`(D_{2k+1}^{})^2`$ on $`(𝒟^+(u_{2k+1}))^4`$, integrate over $`u_{2k+1}`$ using the harmonic delta function and eventually obtain the block
$`(𝒟^+(u_{2k}))^4(D_{2k}^{})^2(𝒟^+(u_{2k}))^4`$. Due to the identity

$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(𝒟^+)^4(D^{})^2`$ (3.2)
we can replace $`(𝒟^+(u_{2k}))^4(D_{2k}^{})^2`$ by $`2\underset{2k}{\overset{}{\mathrm{}}}`$ with the operator $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}`$ given by (2.15). We carry out this replacement for all $`k`$ except for $`k=n`$ and, after some relabelling of harmonics ($`u_{2k}`$ is relabelled as $`u_{k+1}`$, $`k=1,2\mathrm{}n`$), we obtain

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{2n}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4(1)^{n1}2^n}{2n}}{\displaystyle d^{12}z𝑑u_1𝑑u_2\mathrm{}𝑑u_n𝑑u_{n+1}\frac{1}{\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_1)\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_2)\mathrm{}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_{n1})\stackrel{2}{\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}}(u_n)}}`$ (3.3)
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(𝒟^+(u_1))^4(𝒟^+(u_2))^4\mathrm{}(𝒟^+(u_n))^4(𝒟^+(u_{n+1}))^4}{(u_1^+u_2^+)^3(u_2^+u_3^+)^3\mathrm{}(u_n^+u_{n+1}^+)^3}}(D_{n+1}^{})^2\delta ^{(2,2)}(u_{n+1},u_1)`$
$`\times `$ $`\delta ^{12}(zz^{})|_{z=z^{}}q_a^+(u_1)q^{+a}(u_2)q_b^+(u_2)\mathrm{}q_c^+(u_n)q^{+c}(u_{n+1}).`$
This general relation is applicable for any $`n`$.

For $`n>1`$ one can achieve a further simplification in (3.3). We make use of the identity (3.2) one time more, relabel for convenience the indices ($`c`$ for $`a`$, $`a`$ for $`b`$, etc.) and integrate over $`u_{n+1}`$, after which (3.3) for $`n>1`$ is reduced to the expression

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{2n}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4(1)^n2^n}{n}}{\displaystyle d^{12}z𝑑u_1𝑑u_2\mathrm{}𝑑u_n\frac{1}{\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_1)\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_2)\mathrm{}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_{n1})\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_n)}}`$ (3.4)
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(𝒟^+(u_1))^4(𝒟^+(u_2))^4\mathrm{}(𝒟^+(u_n))^4}{(u_1^+u_2^+)^3(u_2^+u_3^+)^3\mathrm{}(u_n^+u_1^+)^3}}\delta ^{12}(zz^{})|_{z=z^{}}`$
$`\times `$ $`q^{+a}(u_1)q_b^+(u_1)q^{+b}(u_2)\mathrm{}q_a^+(u_n).`$
Notice that we could arrive at the same result by using the alternative expression for the propagator of $`𝒩=2`$ gauge superfield:

$`<v_{1A}^{++}(z_1,u_1)v_{B1}^{++}(z_2,u_2)>`$ $`=`$ $`\delta _{AB}{\displaystyle \frac{i}{\underset{w}{\overset{}{\mathrm{}}}(u_1)}}(𝒟_1^+)^4\left\{\delta ^{12}(z_1z_2)\delta ^{(2,2)}(u_1,u_2)\right\}.`$ (3.5)
This propagator, unlike (2) which is manifestly analytic in its both arguments, displays the manifest analyticity only with respect to $`(z_1,u_1)`$. The analyticity with respect to the second argument follows only with taking into account the harmonic delta function .

It is appropriate here to note that the expression (3.4) obtained with using this ‘short’ form of propagator is ill-defined for $`n=1`$. So the $`n=1`$ case needs a special treatment. Indeed, on the one hand, at $`n=1`$ the numerator in (3.4) is proportional to $`(𝒟^+(u_1))^4\delta ^{12}(zz^{})|_{z=z^{}}`$ which is zero. On the other hand, the denominator of (3.4) for $`n=1`$ is $`(u_1^+u_1^+)^3=0`$. Therefore, we encounter a harmonic singularity of the form $`\frac{0}{0}`$. To obtain the correct result for the $`n=1`$ contribution we should proceed from the expression (3.3) without reducing it to (3.4). This amounts to keeping the $`𝒩=2`$ gauge superfield propagator in the manifestly analytic ‘long’ form (2). The necessity to use just the ’long’ form of the propagator to avoid coincident harmonic singularities was emphasized in .

The expression (3.3) for $`n=1`$ is

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_2`$ $`=`$ $`4{\displaystyle d^{12}z𝑑u_1𝑑u_2\frac{1}{\underset{1}{\overset{}{\mathrm{}}}\underset{2}{\overset{2}{\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}}}}\frac{(𝒟^+(u_1))^4(𝒟^+(u_2))^4}{(u_1^+u_2^+)^3}(D_2^{})^2\delta ^{(2,2)}(u_2,u_1)}`$ (3.6)
$`\times `$ $`\delta ^{12}(zz^{})|_{z=z^{}}q_a^+(u_1)q^{+a}(u_2).`$
Using the relation

$`(𝒟^+(u))^4(𝒟^+(u^{}))^4\delta ^8(\theta \theta ^{})|_{\theta =\theta ^{}}=(u^+u^{}_{}{}^{}+)^4,`$ (3.7)
one finds

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_2`$ $`=`$ $`4{\displaystyle d^{12}z𝑑u_1𝑑u_2(u_1^+u_2^+)(D_2^{})^2\delta ^{(2,2)}(u_2,u_1)}`$ (3.8)
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\underset{1}{\overset{}{\mathrm{}}}\underset{2}{\overset{2}{\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}}}}}\delta ^4(xx^{})|_{x=x^{}}q_a^+(u_1)q^{+a}(u_2).`$
Then one can take $`(D^{})^2`$ off a delta function. Since we are interested in contributions depending only on $`q,W,\overline{W}`$ but not on their derivatives, at this step we can omit all the derivatives of the background strengths and replace $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}`$ by $`\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W}`$. As the result, the harmonic delta function becomes free of derivatives, and after integration over one set of harmonics (e.g. over $`u_2`$) one obtains

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_2`$ $`=`$ $`2{\displaystyle d^{12}z𝑑u_1\frac{1}{(\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W})^3}\delta ^4(xx^{})}|_{x=x^{}}q^{+a}(u_1)q_a^{}(u_1).`$ (3.9)
After performing Fourier transformation this correction can be written as

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_2`$ $`=`$ $`2{\displaystyle d^{12}z𝑑u_1q^{+a}(u_1)q_a^{}(u_1)\frac{d^4k}{(2\pi )^4}\frac{1}{(k^2+2W\overline{W})^3}}.`$ (3.10)
Doing the momenta integral, we finally cast it in the form

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_2`$ $`=`$ $`2{\displaystyle d^{12}z𝑑u_1q^{+a}(u_1)q_a^{}(u_1)\frac{1}{2(4\pi )^2W\overline{W}}}.`$ (3.11)
This expression precisely matches with the general result (2.18) – (2.20) obtained by invoking ‘hidden’ $`𝒩=2`$ supersymmetry .

Let us turn to the generic case of $`n>1`$. Since we are interested in contributions which do not depend on space-time derivatives of background hypermultiplets, we can regard the latter to be space-time constants.

To simplify the expression (3.4), we proceed as follows. First, we represent $`q_b^+(u_1)`$ in (3.4) as $`q_b^+(u_1)=D_1^{++}q_b^{}(u_1)`$ (this is possible since $`q_b^+`$ sits on its free mass shell)

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{2n}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4(1)^n}{2^nn}}{\displaystyle d^{12}z𝑑u_1\mathrm{}𝑑u_n\frac{1}{\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_1)\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_2)\mathrm{}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_{n1})\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_n)}}`$ (3.12)
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(𝒟^+(u_1))^4(𝒟^+(u_2))^4\mathrm{}(𝒟^+(u_n))^4}{(u_1^+u_2^+)^3(u_2^+u_3^+)^3\mathrm{}(u_n^+u_1^+)^3}}\delta ^{12}(zz^{})|_{z=z^{}}`$
$`\times `$ $`q^{+a}(u_1)D_1^{++}q_b^{}(u_1)q^{+b}(u_2)\mathrm{}q_a^+(u_n).`$
Then, integrating by parts and using the mass-shell condition $`D_1^{++}q^{+a}(u_1)=0`$, we throw the harmonic derivative $`D_1^{++}`$ on the harmonic factor

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(u_1^+u_2^+)^3(u_2^+u_3^+)^3\mathrm{}(u_n^+u_1^+)^3}}.`$ (3.13)
We note that acting of $`D_1^{++}`$ on $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_1)`$ would lead only to terms which are proportional to derivatives of the background superfield strengths and so are irrelevant for our purpose of calculating the leading contributions. The result of acting of $`D_1^{++}`$ on (3.13) is

$`D_1^{++}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(u_1^+u_2^+)^3(u_2^+u_3^+)^3\mathrm{}(u_n^+u_1^+)^3}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}[(D_2^{})^2\delta ^{(2,2)}(u_1,u_2){\displaystyle \frac{1}{(u_1^+u_n^+)^3}}+(u_2u_n)]`$ (3.14)
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(u_2^+u_3^+)^3\mathrm{}(u_{n1}^+u_n^+)^3}}.`$
After substituting (3.14) in (3.12) we obtain

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{2n}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4(1)^n2^n}{n}}{\displaystyle d^{12}z𝑑u_1\mathrm{}𝑑u_n\frac{1}{\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_1)\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_2)\mathrm{}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_{n1})\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_n)}}`$ (3.15)
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}[(D_2^{})^2\delta ^{(2,2)}(u_1,u_2){\displaystyle \frac{1}{(u_1^+u_n^+)^3}}+(u_2u_n)]{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(u_2^+u_3^+)^3\mathrm{}(u_{n1}^+u_n^+)^3}}`$
$`\times `$ $`(𝒟^+(u_1))^4(𝒟^+(u_2))^4\mathrm{}(𝒟^+(u_n))^4\delta ^{12}(zz^{})|_{z=z^{}}`$
$`\times `$ $`q^{+a}(u_1)q_b^{}(u_1)q^{+b}(u_2)\mathrm{}q^{+d}(u_n)q_a^+(u_n).`$
Then we take the factor $`(D_2^{})^2`$ off the delta function. It is easy to see that this factor can give a non-vanishing result only when hitting $`(𝒟^+(u_2))^4`$. Then we relabel $`u_2u_n`$ in the second term in the square bracket in (3.15), after which it becomes identical to the first one. Doing integral over $`u_1`$, we arrive at the following intermediate expression for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{2n}`$

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{2n}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4(1)^n2^n}{n}}{\displaystyle d^{12}z𝑑u_2\mathrm{}𝑑u_n\frac{1}{\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_2)\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_2)\mathrm{}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_{n1})\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_n)}}`$ (3.16)
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(u_2^+u_3^+)^3\mathrm{}(u_{n1}^+u_n^+)^3(u_n^+u_2^+)^3}}`$
$`\times `$ $`(𝒟^+(u_2))^4[(D_2^{})^2(𝒟^+(u_2))^4]\mathrm{}(𝒟^+(u_n))^4\delta ^{12}(zz^{})|_{z=z^{}}`$
$`\times `$ $`q^{+a}(u_2)q_b^{}(u_2)q^{+b}(u_2)q_c^+(u_2)\mathrm{}q^{+d}(u_n)q_a^+(u_n).`$
At the next step we repeat above procedure for $`q_c^+(u_2)`$ in (3.16), i.e. represent it in the form $`q_c^+(u_2)=D_2^{++}q_c^{}(u_2)`$ and integrate by parts with respect to $`D_2^{++}`$. Performing the same manipulations as in deriving (3.16), we bring $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{2n}`$ into the form

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{2n}`$ $`=`$ $`(1)^2{\displaystyle \frac{4(1)^n2^n}{n}}{\displaystyle d^{12}z𝑑u_3\mathrm{}𝑑u_n\frac{1}{\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_2)\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_2)\mathrm{}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_{n1})\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_n)}}`$ (3.17)
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(u_3^+u_4^+)^3\mathrm{}(u_{n1}^+u_n^+)^3(u_n^+u_3^+)^3}}`$
$`\times `$ $`(𝒟^+(u_3))^4[(D_3^{})^2(𝒟^+(u_3))^4]^2(𝒟^+(u_4))^4\mathrm{}(𝒟^+(u_n))^4\delta ^{12}(zz^{})|_{z=z^{}}`$
$`\times `$ $`q^{+a}(u_3)q_b^{}(u_3)q^{+b}(u_3)q_c^{}(u_3)\mathrm{}q^{+d}(u_n)q_a^+(u_n).`$
Note that $`D_2^{++}`$, when hitting $`(𝒟^+(u_2))^4[(D_2^{})^2(𝒟^+(u_2))^4]`$, gives rise to the structures like $`(𝒟^+(u))^4(𝒟^+(u))^3=0`$. After $`k`$ analogous steps, we have

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{2n}`$ $`=`$ $`(1)^k{\displaystyle \frac{4(1)^n2^n}{n}}{\displaystyle d^{12}z𝑑u_{nk}\mathrm{}𝑑u_n\frac{1}{\stackrel{k}{\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}}(u_{k+1})\mathrm{}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_{n1})\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}(u_n)}}`$ (3.18)
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(u_{k+1}^+u_{k+2}^+)^3\mathrm{}(u_{n1}^+u_n^+)^3(u_n^+u_{k+1}^+)^3}}`$
$`\times `$ $`(𝒟^+(u_k))^4[(D_k^{})^2(𝒟^+(u_k))^4]^k(𝒟^+(u_{k+1}))^4\mathrm{}(𝒟^+(u_n))^4\delta ^{12}(zz^{})|_{z=z^{}}`$
$`\times `$ $`q^{+a}(u_{nk})q_{a_1}^{}(u_{nk})q^{+a_1}(u_{nk})q_{a_2}^{}(u_{nk})\mathrm{}q^{+a_k}(u_{nk})\mathrm{}q^{+d}(u_n)q_a^+(u_n).`$
Repeating the same procedure further, we can reduce the harmonic integral to that over three sets of harmonics, $`u,u^{}`$ and $`u^{\prime \prime }`$:

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{2n}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4(1)^{2n3}2^n}{n}}{\displaystyle d^{12}z𝑑u𝑑u^{}𝑑u^{\prime \prime }\frac{1}{\underset{u}{\overset{n2}{\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}}}\underset{u^{}}{\overset{}{\mathrm{}}}\underset{u^{\prime \prime }}{\overset{}{\mathrm{}}}}}`$ (3.19)
$`\times `$ $`[(𝒟^+(u))^4(D^{})^2]^{n3}(𝒟^+(u))^4(𝒟^+(u^{}))^4(𝒟^+(u^{\prime \prime }))^4\delta ^{12}(zz^{})|_{z=z^{}}`$
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(u^+u^{}_{}{}^{}+)^3(u^{}_{}{}^{}+u^{{}_{}{}^{\prime \prime }+})^3(u^{{}_{}{}^{\prime \prime }+}u^+)^3}}q^{+a}(u)q_b^{}(u)q^{+b}(u)\mathrm{}`$
$`\times `$ $`q^{+e}(u)q_c^+(u)q^{+c}(u^{})q_d^+(u^{})q^{+d}(u^{\prime \prime })q_a^+(u^{\prime \prime }).`$
Then, using (3.2), we can reduce the number of spinor derivatives in the numerator by the relation

$`[(𝒟^+(u))^4(D^{})^2]^{n3}=(2)^{n3}\underset{u}{\overset{n3}{\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}}}.`$ (3.20)
After this we once again effect the previous procedure by writing $`q_c^+(u)=D_u^{++}q_c^{}(u)`$ and throwing $`D_u^{++}`$ on the harmonic factor. Repeating the same steps as above and using at the last step the relation (3.20), we can perform the $`u^{}`$-integration, thus arriving at the expression

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{2n}`$ $`=`$ $`(2)^n2^n{\displaystyle d^{12}z𝑑u𝑑u^{\prime \prime }\frac{1}{\underset{u}{\overset{n}{\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}}}\underset{u^{}}{\overset{}{\mathrm{}}}\underset{u^{\prime \prime }}{\overset{}{\mathrm{}}}}\frac{(𝒟^+(u))^4(𝒟^+(u^{\prime \prime }))^4}{(u^+u^{{}_{}{}^{\prime \prime }+})^6}\delta ^{12}(zz^{})}|_{z=z^{}}`$ (3.21)
$`\times `$ $`q^{+a}(u)q_b^{}(u)q^{+b}(u)\mathrm{}q^{+e}(u)q_c^{}(u)q^{+c}(u)q_d^+(u)q^{+d}(u^{\prime \prime })q_a^+(u^{\prime \prime }).`$
Now we suppress all the derivative-depending terms in $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}`$ by replacing $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}`$ with $`\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W}`$. After this we use the identity (3.7). We find

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{2n}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(2)^n2^n}{n}}{\displaystyle d^{12}z𝑑u𝑑u^{\prime \prime }\frac{1}{(\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W})^{n+2}}\delta ^4(xx^{})}|_{x=x^{}}`$ (3.22)
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(u^+u^{{}_{}{}^{\prime \prime }+})^2}}q^{+a}(u)q_b^{}(u)q^{+b}(u)\mathrm{}q_c^+(u)q^{+c}(u^{\prime \prime })q_a^+(u^{\prime \prime }).`$
The last step is to rewrite $`q_a^+(u^{\prime \prime })=D_{u^{\prime \prime }}^{++}q_a^{}(u^{\prime \prime })`$ and to throw $`D_{u^{\prime \prime }}^{++}`$ on $`1/(u^+u^{{}_{}{}^{\prime \prime }+})^2`$, which gives

$$D_{u^{\prime \prime }}^{++}\frac{1}{(u^+u^{{}_{}{}^{\prime \prime }+})^2}=D_{u^{\prime \prime }}^{}\delta ^{(2,2)}(u^{\prime \prime },u)=D_u^{}\delta ^{(0,0)}(u^{\prime \prime },u).$$

Then we throw $`D_u^{}`$ on $`q_c^+(u)`$, integrate over $`u^{\prime \prime }`$ and perform the Fourier transformation. The expression for the contribution of $`2n`$-th order in hypermultiplets which we obtain at this step is as follows

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{2n}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(2)^n2^n}{n}}{\displaystyle d^{12}z𝑑u\frac{d^4k}{(2\pi )^4}\frac{1}{(k^2+2W\overline{W})^{n+2}}}`$ (3.23)
$`\times `$ $`q^{+a}(u)q_b^{}(u)q^{+b}(u)\mathrm{}q^{+c}(u)q_a^{}(u).`$
Since (in Minkowski space)

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d^4k}{(2\pi )^4}\frac{1}{(k^2+2W\overline{W})^{n+2}}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{(4\pi )^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }(n)}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(n+2)}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(2W\overline{W})^n}},`$ (3.24)
we find the final expression in the form

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{2n}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(2)^n}{n^2(n+1)}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(4\pi )^2}}{\displaystyle d^{12}z\frac{1}{(W\overline{W})^n}(q^{+a}(u)q_a^{}(u))^n}.`$ (3.25)
This expression precisely coincides with the result (2.18) - (2.20) obtained from the requirement of $`𝒩=4`$ supersymmetry. This expression can be represented as

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{2n}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{n^2(n+1)}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(4\pi )^2}}{\displaystyle d^{12}zX^n},`$ (3.26)
where

$`X=2{\displaystyle \frac{q^{+a}q_a^{}}{W\overline{W}}}`$ (3.27)
(note that in the central basis of $`𝒩=2`$ harmonic superspace the hypermultiplet superfields are expressed on shell as $`q^{\pm a}=q^{ia}(z)u_i^\pm `$, and so $`X`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{2n}`$ do not depend on harmonics ). The result for $`n=1`$, eq. (3.11), is also incorporated by the general expression (3.26).

Thus the total one-loop effective action in the hypermultiplet sector explicitly computed using the harmonic supergraph techniques is given by the expression (2.18) - (2.20) anticipated on the $`𝒩=4`$ supersymmetry ground in . Combined with the non-holomorphic effective potential, it provides the exact $`𝒩=4`$ supersymmetric low-energy $`𝒩=4`$ SYM effective action (2.17) .

## 4 A manifestly $`𝒩=2`$ supersymmetric calculation of the non-holomorphic effective potential of $`W,\overline{W}`$

Here we demonstrate that the techniques developed in section 3 are equally applicable to calculating the non-holomorphic effective potential (1.1), with taking into account some specific features of this problem. The calculation is carried out entirely within the $`𝒩=2`$ harmonic superfield formalism, with preserving manifest $`𝒩=2`$ supersymmetry.333A different method of manifestly $`𝒩=2`$ supersymmetric calculation of the potential (1.1) was developed in  using proper-time techniques.

To compute the one-loop low-energy effective action of $`W,\overline{W}`$ in the $`𝒩=2`$ harmonic background field method, we again make the splitting $`V^{++}V^{++}+gv^{++}`$ in (2.1), with $`V^{++}`$ being a background field and $`v^{++}`$ a quantum one. This part of the full effective action of the theory under consideration is determined by the contributions from the pure $`𝒩=2`$ SYM sector, hypermultiplet sector, Faddeev-Popov (FP) ghosts and third ghosts. However, the contributions from the hypermultiplet and FP ghost sectors in the one-loop approximation are known to exactly cancel each other  (see also ). The reason for this cancellation is as follows. It was shown in  that the action of FP ghosts (with choosing the background-gauge covariant version of Fermi gauge for the quantum superfields $`v^{++}`$) has the same form as the action of massless hypermultiplet in the adjoint representation. The $`𝒩=4`$ SYM theory is $`𝒩=2`$ SYM plus a hypermultiplet in adjoint representation. So the contribution of FP ghosts to $`𝒩=4`$ SYM one-loop effective action is equal to that of hypermultiplets taken with the opposite sign (hypermultiplets are bosons, while FP ghosts are fermions). Therefore, that part of the full one-loop effective action which depends only on $`𝒩=2`$ gauge superfields is constituted by contributions from the pure $`𝒩=2`$ SYM sector and the third ghosts sector.

The general form of this part of the one-loop effective action was found in :

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }^{(1)}={\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}Tr_{(2,2)}\mathrm{ln}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}Tr_{(4,0)}\mathrm{ln}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}.`$ (4.1)
Here the symbol $`Tr`$ means both the functional trace and the one with respect to matrix indices. The operator $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}`$ is given by the on-shell expression (2.15), with $`W,\overline{W}`$ being matrices which take values in the Cartan subalgebra of $`su(2)`$. The exact matrix structure of this operator will be explored further. For our calculation in this Section it will be important that $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}`$ includes both the $`W\overline{W}`$ and derivative-depending terms. First contribution in (4.1) originates from the $`𝒩=2`$ SYM sector, and the second one is determined by the third ghosts $`\rho ^{(+4)},\sigma `$ . The propagator of these ghosts reads

$`G^{(4,0)}(1,2)=<\rho ^{(+4)}(1)\sigma (2)>=(D^{++})_1^2G^{(0,0)}(1,2),`$ (4.2)
where $`G^{(0,0)}`$ is the propagator of an uncharged analytic superfield $`\omega `$ . The precise form of $`G^{(0,0)}`$ will be of no need for our further purposes.

Let us consider a theory of uncharged analytic superfield $`\sigma `$ with the action

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{tr}{\displaystyle 𝑑\zeta ^{(4)}\sigma (D^{++})^2}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}\sigma .`$ (4.3)
This theory leads to the same Green function (4.2) and hence to the same contribution to the effective action (4.1). Therefore the action (4.3) can be treated as an alternative form of the action of third ghosts. It will prove to be more convenient for our purposes. Hereafter, the symbol ‘tr’ denotes trace over matrix indices only.

Thus the quadratic action of quantum superfields is given by

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{tr}{\displaystyle 𝑑\zeta ^{(4)}v^{++}}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}v^{++}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{tr}{\displaystyle 𝑑\zeta ^{(4)}\sigma (D^{++})^2}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}\sigma .`$ (4.4)
As the next important step, we separate $`v^{++}`$ in the two orthogonal projections

$`v^{++}=v_T^{++}+D^{++}\xi ,`$ (4.5)
$`D^{++}v_T^{++}=0.`$ (4.6)
The corresponding projecting operator is given in  and it is a covariantization of the analogous operator introduced in . The covariantized projecting operator $`\mathrm{\Pi }_T^{(2,2)}(1,2)`$ is defined by the expression

$`v_T^{++}(1)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝑑\zeta _2^{(4)}\mathrm{\Pi }_T^{(2,2)}(1,2)v^{++}(2)},`$ (4.7)
and preserves the analyticity and the harmonic constraint in (4.6).444I.L.B. is very thankful to S.M. Kuzenko for clarifying the technical details of calculations in Ref., especially those related to the structure and properties of the projection operator $`\mathrm{\Pi }_T^{(2,2)}`$. Its explicit form can be found in .

After splitting $`v^{++}`$ as in (4.5), the action (4.4) can be rewritten as

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{tr}{\displaystyle 𝑑\zeta ^{(4)}v_T^{++}}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}v_T^{++}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{tr}{\displaystyle 𝑑\zeta ^{(4)}\xi (D^{++})^2}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}\xi {\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{tr}{\displaystyle 𝑑\zeta ^{(4)}\sigma (D^{++})^2}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}\sigma .`$ (4.8)
We see that $`\xi `$ is a boson, while $`\sigma `$ is a fermion and they have the same actions. Clearly, their contributions to the one-loop effective action are equal up to the sign and hence cancel each other. Therefore it is sufficient to consider only the following part of the quadratic action:

$`S_2={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{tr}{\displaystyle 𝑑\zeta ^{(4)}v_T^{++}}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}v_T^{++}.`$ (4.9)
Further, quantum fields $`v_T^{++}`$ with values in $`su(2)`$ can be written in the form (2.6) where $`\tau _i`$ are generators of $`su(2)`$ related to Pauli matrices $`\sigma _i`$ by (2.7). They satisfy the relations (2.8). The background $`𝒩=2`$ superfields are expanded as $`𝒲=𝒲_i\tau _i`$. We calculate the effective action with the background superfields taking values in the unbroken $`u(1)`$. This corresponds to the restriction $`𝒲=𝒲_3\tau _3`$. As before, we denote $`𝒲_3`$ by $`W`$.

The quadratic action of quantum superfields for the given background can be read off from (2.13), with the background hypermultiplets being put equal to zero:

$`S_2={\displaystyle 𝑑\zeta ^{(4)}\left\{\chi _T^{++}(\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W})\overline{\chi }_T^{++}\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\chi _T^{++}((𝒟^{+\alpha }W)𝒟_\alpha ^{}+(\overline{𝒟}^{+\dot{\alpha }}W)\overline{𝒟}_{\dot{\alpha }}^{})\overline{\chi }_T^{++}\right\}}.`$ (4.10)
The one-loop effective action corresponding to (4.10) is

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }^{(1)}=iTr_{(2,2)}^T\mathrm{ln}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}},`$ (4.11)
where the symbol $`Tr^T`$ means that the trace is taken over subspace of the analytic superfields $`v_T^{++}`$ satisfying the constraint $`𝒟^{++}v_T^{++}=0`$. Hereafter the operator $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}`$ acting on $`\chi _T^{++}`$ is given by the expression (2.15). Eq. (4.11) leads to the following expression for the one-loop effective action :

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }^{(1)}=i{\displaystyle }d\zeta _1^{(4)}(\mathrm{ln}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}})\mathrm{\Pi }_T^{(2,2)}(1,2)|_{\zeta _1=\zeta _2,u_1=u_2}.`$ (4.12)
The projector $`\mathrm{\Pi }_T^{(2,2)}`$ (4.7) at the coinciding harmonics is given by the expression

$`\mathrm{\Pi }_T^{(2,2)}(1,2)|_{u_1=u_2}`$ $`=`$ $`(𝒟_1^+)^4\delta ^{12}(z_1z_2).`$ (4.13)
Therefore the one-loop effective action is

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }^{(1)}=i{\displaystyle }d\zeta _1^{(4)}(𝒟_1^+)^4(\mathrm{ln}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}})\delta ^{12}(z_2z_1)|_{z_1=z_2}.`$ (4.14)
Let us consider the general structure of the quantum corrections. We substitute the expression $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}=\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W}+R`$ in (4.14) and obtain

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }^{(1)}=i{\displaystyle 𝑑\zeta _1^{(4)}(𝒟_1^+)^4\mathrm{ln}(\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W}+R)\delta ^{12}(z_2z_1)}|_{z_2=z_1},`$ (4.15)
where

$`R{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}((𝒟^{+\alpha }W)𝒟_\alpha ^{}+(\overline{𝒟}^{+\dot{\alpha }}\overline{W})\overline{𝒟}_{\dot{\alpha }}^{}).`$ (4.16)
Note that the expression (4.15) is free of the harmonic singularities since it does not contain harmonic delta functions which could lead, in principle, to appearance of such singularities in harmonic supergraphs. To find the effective action, we expand (4.15) in power series with respect to R, i.e. spinor derivatives of $`W,\overline{W}`$

$`\mathrm{ln}(\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W}+R)=\mathrm{ln}(\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W})+{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{(1)^{n1}}{n}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{R}{\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W}}}\right)^n.`$ (4.17)
We obtain

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }^{(1)}`$ $`=`$ $`i\mathrm{tr}{\displaystyle }d\zeta _1^{(4)}(𝒟_1^+)^4\{\mathrm{ln}(\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W})`$ (4.18)
$`+{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{(1)^{n1}}{n}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W}}}\right)^nR^n\}\delta ^{12}(z_2z_1)|_{z_2=z_1}.`$
We observe that the first term in (4.18), i.e. the one containing $`\mathrm{ln}(\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W})`$ carries only four spinor derivatives coming from $`(𝒟^+)^4`$. On the other hand, shrinking any $`\theta `$ loop into a point in $`\theta `$-space by the rule (3.7) requires the presence of at least eight spinor derivatives. Hence, the first term in (4.18) cannot give contribution to the non-holomorphic effective potential.

The expansion of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^{(1)}`$ given by (4.18) with the first term omitted can be represented by a sequence of harmonic supergraphs. Each supergraph is a ring with $`n`$ vertices and $`n`$ internal lines. The internal lines are represented by the propagators $`(\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W})^1\delta ^{12}(z_1z_2)`$ defined in full $`𝒩=2`$ superspace. There is one common factor $`(𝒟^+)^4`$, and at each vertex an external line $`𝒟^+W`$ or $`\overline{𝒟}^+\overline{W}`$ is attached, with the factors $`𝒟^{}`$ or $`\overline{𝒟}^{}`$, respectively. The analyticity of the contribution of any supergraph is guaranteed by the factor $`(𝒟^+)^4`$. Thus the contribution of a generic supergraph contains $`(𝒟_1^+)^4`$ from (4.18) and $`n`$ $`𝒟^{}`$ factors, each being associated with each of $`n`$ vertices.

Our aim is to calculate the contribution to the nonholomorphic effective potential which has the form $`d^{12}z𝑑uF(W,\overline{W})`$, with $`F(W,\overline{W})`$ being some function of the background strengths $`W,\overline{W}`$, but not of their derivatives. We can rewrite this contribution as an integral over the analytic harmonic subspace by the rule

$`{\displaystyle d^{12}z𝑑uF(W,\overline{W})}={\displaystyle 𝑑\zeta ^{(4)}(𝒟^+)^4F(W,\overline{W})}.`$ (4.19)
This representation shows that the contribution to the nonholomorphic effective potential rewritten as an integral over the analytic subspace contains exactly two chiral derivatives and two antichiral ones acting on the background $`W,\overline{W}`$. To extract such corrections we must represent all vertices but one as integrals over $`d^{12}z`$, and keep one vertex in the form of integral over $`d\zeta ^{(4)}`$. From (4.18) we can derive that the contribution of an arbitrary supergraph with $`n=a+b`$ vertices, $`a`$ vertices containing $`𝒟W`$ and $`b`$ vertices containing $`\overline{𝒟}\overline{W}`$, is proportional to the expression

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_n{\displaystyle 𝑑\zeta ^{(4)}(𝒟W)^a(\overline{𝒟}\overline{W})^b[𝒟^a\overline{𝒟}^b(𝒟^+)^4\delta ^{12}(zz^{})|_{z=z^{}}]}.`$ (4.20)
Since for obtaining the contribution to nonholomorphic effective potential we must keep only the terms containing four supercovariant derivatives on $`W,\overline{W}`$ (two chiral and two antichiral ones), we are led to specialize to the case of $`a=b=2`$. For $`a,b>2`$ we would obtain contributions which remain to be derivative-dependent after representing them as integrals over $`d^{12}z`$. For $`a,b<2`$ we would have not enough $`𝒟`$-factors to shrink a $`\theta `$-loop into a point. Therefore the only terms in the expansion of $`\mathrm{ln}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}`$ which can be relevant for our purpose are those of the second order in both $`𝒟W`$ and $`\overline{𝒟}\overline{W}`$. There is only one such term in the expansion of $`\mathrm{ln}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}`$. It is the $`n=4`$ term the explicit form of which is

$`\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W}}}\right)^4{\displaystyle \frac{1}{16}}\left[(𝒟^{+\alpha }W)𝒟_\alpha ^{}+(\overline{𝒟}^{+\dot{\alpha }}\overline{W})\overline{𝒟}_{\dot{\alpha }}^{}\right]^4`$
$`={\displaystyle \frac{6}{16}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W}}}\right)^4[(𝒟^{+\alpha }W)𝒟_\alpha ^{}]^2[(\overline{𝒟}_{\dot{\alpha }}^+\overline{W})\overline{𝒟}^{\dot{\alpha }}]^2+\mathrm{}.`$ (4.21)
The coefficient $`1/16`$ arose due to $`1/4`$ from the expansion of logarithm and the factor $`(1/\sqrt{2})^4`$. The coefficient 6 appeared from the binomial expansion $`\left[i(𝒟^{+\alpha }W)𝒟_\alpha ^{}+i(\overline{𝒟}^{+\dot{\alpha }}\overline{W})\overline{𝒟}_{\dot{\alpha }}^{}\right]^4`$
$`=6((𝒟^{+\alpha }W)𝒟_\alpha ^{})^2((\overline{𝒟}^{+\dot{\alpha }}\overline{W})\overline{𝒟}_{\dot{\alpha }}^{})^2+\mathrm{}`$. Here and in (4.21) dots stand for terms giving zero trace.

After keeping only the $`n=4`$ term (4.21) in $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^{(1)}`$, eq. (4.18), the latter can be represented by a four-point supergraph of the form

$`|`$$``$$`|`$$``$$``$ $`𝒟_\alpha ^{}(u)`$$`\overline{𝒟}^{\dot{\alpha }}(u)`$ $`𝒟_\beta ^{}(u)`$$`\overline{𝒟}^{\dot{\beta }}(u)`$ $`(𝒟^+(u))^4`$ $`𝒟^{+\alpha }(u)W`$ $`\overline{𝒟}_{\dot{\alpha }}^+(u)\overline{W}`$ $`𝒟^{+\beta }(u)W`$ $`\overline{𝒟}_{\dot{\beta }}^+(u)\overline{W}`$

Here external legs represent derivatives of superfield strengths, while bold internal lines stand for the “free” propagators $`\frac{1}{(\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W})}\delta ^{12}(z_1z_2)`$. The full contribution of this graph is given by the following expression:

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_4`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{6}{16}}i{\displaystyle 𝑑\zeta _1^{(4)}d^{12}z_2d^{12}z_3d^{12}z_4(𝒟^{+\alpha }(u_1)W(x_1,\theta _1))𝒟_\alpha ^{}(u_1)(\overline{𝒟}_{\dot{\alpha }}^+(u_1)\overline{W}(x_2,\theta _2))\overline{𝒟}^{\dot{\alpha }}(u_1)}`$ (4.22)
$`\times `$ $`(𝒟^{+\beta }(u_1)W(x_3,\theta _3))𝒟_\beta ^{}(u_1)(\overline{𝒟}_{\dot{\beta }}^+(u_1)\overline{W}(x_4,\theta _4))\overline{𝒟}^{\dot{\beta }}(u_1)(𝒟^+(u_1))^4`$
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W})}}\delta ^{12}(z_1z_2){\displaystyle \frac{1}{(\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W})}}\delta ^{12}(z_2z_3){\displaystyle \frac{1}{(\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W})}}\delta ^{12}(z_3z_4)`$
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W})}}\delta ^{12}(z_4z_1).`$
We observe that this expression contains only one integral over harmonics $`u_1`$ (recall that the harmonic integral is included into $`d\zeta _1^{(4)}`$) and does not involve harmonic delta functions due to the structure of (4.15), (4.18). Therefore it is automatically free of harmonic singularities. Then we anticommute $`\overline{𝒟}^{\dot{\alpha }}(u)`$ with $`𝒟_\beta ^{}(u)`$, which produces factor $`1`$. As the result we obtain

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_4`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{6}{16}}i{\displaystyle 𝑑\zeta _1^{(4)}d^{12}z_2d^{12}z_3d^{12}z_4(𝒟^{+\alpha }(u_1)W(x_1,\theta _1))(\overline{𝒟}_{\dot{\alpha }}^+(u_1)\overline{W}(x_2,\theta _2))}`$ (4.23)
$`\times `$ $`(𝒟^{+\beta }(u_1)W(x_3,\theta _3))(\overline{𝒟}_{\dot{\beta }}^+(u_1)\overline{W}(x_4,\theta _4))𝒟_\alpha ^{}(u_1)𝒟_\beta ^{}(u_1)\overline{𝒟}^{\dot{\alpha }}(u_1)\overline{𝒟}^{\dot{\beta }}(u_1)(𝒟^+(u_1))^4`$
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W})}}\delta ^{12}(z_1z_2){\displaystyle \frac{1}{(\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W})}}\delta ^{12}(z_2z_3){\displaystyle \frac{1}{(\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W})}}\delta ^{12}(z_3z_4)`$
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W})}}\delta ^{12}(z_4z_1).`$
We then integrate over $`\theta _3,\theta _4`$ with the help of delta functions and shrink a loop into a point by the rule

$`\delta ^8(\theta _1\theta _2)(\overline{𝒟}^{\dot{\alpha }}(u_1))(\overline{𝒟}^{\dot{\beta }}(u_1))(𝒟_\alpha ^{}(u_1))(𝒟_\beta ^{}(u_1))(𝒟^+(u_1))^4\delta ^8(\theta _1\theta _2)`$
$`=4ϵ_{\alpha \beta }ϵ^{\dot{\alpha }\dot{\beta }}\delta ^8(\theta _1\theta _2).`$ (4.24)
Further we integrate over $`\theta _2`$ and arrive at the expression

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_4`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{6}{4}}i{\displaystyle 𝑑\zeta _1^{(4)}d^4x_2d^4x_3d^4x_4(𝒟^{+\alpha }(u_1)W(x_1,\theta ))(𝒟_\alpha ^+(u_1)W(x_3,\theta ))}`$ (4.25)
$`\times `$ $`(\overline{𝒟}_{\dot{\alpha }}^+(u_1)\overline{W}(x_2,\theta ))(\overline{𝒟}^{+\dot{\alpha }}(u_1)\overline{W}(x_4,\theta ))`$
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W})}}\delta ^4(x_1x_2){\displaystyle \frac{1}{(\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W})}}\delta ^4(x_2x_3){\displaystyle \frac{1}{(\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W})}}\delta ^4(x_3x_4)`$
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(\mathrm{}+2W\overline{W})}}\delta ^4(x_4x_1).`$
The (non-holomorphic) effective potential by definition is an effective Lagrangian with the background strengths slowly varying in space-time. Therefore we can put

$`(𝒟^{+\alpha }(u_1)W(x_1,\theta ))(𝒟_\alpha ^+(u_1)W(x_2,\theta ))(\overline{𝒟}_{\dot{\alpha }}^+(u_1)\overline{W}(x_3,\theta ))(\overline{𝒟}^{+\dot{\alpha }}(u_1)\overline{W}(x_4,\theta ))`$
$`(𝒟^{+\alpha }(u_1)W(x_1,\theta ))(𝒟_\alpha ^+(u_1)W(x_1,\theta ))(\overline{𝒟}_{\dot{\alpha }}^+(u_1)\overline{W}(x_1,\theta ))(\overline{𝒟}^{+\dot{\alpha }}(u_1)\overline{W}(x_1,\theta )).`$ (4.26)
After this we perform Fourier transformation which leads to

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_4`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{6}{4}}i{\displaystyle 𝑑\zeta _1^{(4)}(𝒟^{+\alpha }(u_1)W)^2(x,\theta )(\overline{𝒟}_{\dot{\alpha }}^+(u_1)\overline{W})^2(x,\theta )\frac{d^4k}{(2\pi )^4}\frac{1}{(k^22W\overline{W})^4}}.`$ (4.27)
After doing the loop integration by the rule

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d^4k}{(2\pi )^4}\frac{1}{(k^22W\overline{W})^4}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{6}}i{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(4\pi )^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(2W\overline{W})^2}}`$ (4.28)
we have

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_4`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{16}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\zeta _1^{(4)}(𝒟^{+\alpha }(u_1)W)^2(\overline{𝒟}_{\dot{\alpha }}^+(u_1)\overline{W})^2\frac{1}{(4\pi )^2}\frac{1}{(W\overline{W})^2}}.`$ (4.29)
Then we note that

$`(𝒟^{+\alpha }(u_1)W)^2(\overline{𝒟}_{\dot{\alpha }}^+(u_1)\overline{W})^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(W\overline{W})^2}}=16(𝒟^+(u_1))^4\left(\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{W}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{\overline{W}}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}\right),`$ (4.30)
whence

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_4`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(4\pi )^2}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\zeta _1^{(4)}(𝒟^+(u_1))^4\left(\mathrm{ln}\frac{W}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}\mathrm{ln}\frac{\overline{W}}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}\right)}.`$ (4.31)
Finally, we pass to the integration over the full harmonic superspace, $`𝑑\zeta _1^{(4)}(𝒟^+(u_1))^4=d^{12}z𝑑u_1`$, and take into account that the $`u_1`$ integral in (4.31) can be taken away because the integrand does not depend on harmonics. Hence we finally obtain the complete one-loop non-holomorphic effective potential just in the form (1.1) given in .

We conclude that the non-holomorphic potential of $`W,\overline{W}`$, like the hypermultiplet-dependent part of the full effective action, can be self-consistently derived in the framework of the quantum harmonic superspace approach.

## 5 Summary

To summarize, in this paper we addressed the problem of calculating $`𝒩=4`$ supersymmetric low-energy effective action of $`𝒩=4`$ $`SU(2)`$ SYM theory in the Coulomb branch formulated in harmonic superspace as $`𝒩=2`$ SYM theory coupled to the hypermultiplet in adjoint representation of gauge group. We have developed a universal procedure of computing both the hypermultiplet-dependent and purely $`𝒩=2`$ SYM parts of the effective action, based on the covariant harmonic supergraph techniques ensuring a manifest $`𝒩=2`$ supersymmetry at every stage of calculation. The directly computed hypermultiplet part of the effective action was proved to coincide with the expression found earlier in  by invoking the requirement of hidden $`𝒩=2`$ supersymmetry which completes the manifest $`𝒩=2`$ one to the full $`𝒩=4`$ supersymmetry. Thus the direct quantum computation reproduces the effective Lagrangian found in . Also, we demonstrated that the same $`𝒩=2`$ covariant harmonic supergraph techniques allow one to derive the non-holomorphic $`W,\overline{W}`$ potential. We conclude that our approach sets up a generic manifestly $`𝒩=2`$ supersymmetric framework for analysing the dependence of the full low-energy effective action of $`𝒩=4`$ SYM theory on all fields of $`𝒩=4`$ gauge multiplet. The results of  and this paper can be regarded as providing the ultimate solution to the problem of constructing the manifestly $`𝒩=2`$ supersymmetric exact low-energy effective action in $`𝒩=4`$ SYM theory. Whereas we considered here the simplest case of the gauge group $`SU(2)`$, it is straightforward to extend our study to the general case of gauge group $`SU(N)`$ broken down to $`U(1)^{N1}`$.

It would be interesting to find, using both the quantum and algebraic methods, the full $`𝒩=4`$ supersymmetric form of some subleading $`W,\overline{W}`$ terms in the effective action of $`𝒩=4`$ SYM theory, e.g. of those studied in . This could provide further checks of the supergravity/super Yang-Mills correspondence and be of direct relevance to the closely related problem of constructing $`𝒩=4`$ superconformally invariant extension of the Dirac-Born-Infeld theory in $`𝒩=2`$ superfield formulation .

## Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to S.M. Kuzenko for critical comments on section 4 of the paper. The work of I.L.B. and E.A.I. was partially supported by INTAS grant, project No 00-00254, DFG grant, project No 436 RUS 113/669 and RFBR-DFG grant, project No 02-02-04002. The work of E.A.I. was partially supported by the RFBR-CNRS grant, project No 01-02-22005. A.Yu.P. is grateful to FAPESP grant, project No 00/12671-7, for support. I.L.B. thanks BLTP, JINR and, personally, its Director Prof. A.T. Filippov for kind hospitality in Dubna at the final stage of this work. He is also very grateful to Prof. S.J. Gates for kind hospitality in the University of Maryland in Fall of 2002. This work has been finalized when E.A.I. visited the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the University of Hannover. He thanks Profs. O. Lechtenfeld and N. Dragon for kind hospitality.