Branches of N=1 vacua and Argyres-Douglas points -: art. no. 063

We study the N = 1 version of Argyres-Douglas (AD) points by making use of the recent developments in understanding the dynamics of the chiral sector of N = 1 gauge theories. We shall consider N = 1 U(N) gauge theories with an adjoint matter and took for the tree-level superpotential W(x) which reproduces the N = 2 AD points via the factorization equation relating the N = 1 and N = 2 curves. We find that the following superpotentials generate the N = 2 AD points: (1) W'(x) = x(N) +/- 2Lambda(N), (2) W'(x) = x(n), N - 1 greater than or equal to n greater than or equal to N/2 + 1. In case (1) the physics is essentially the same as the N = 2 theory even in the presence of the superpotential. There seems to be an underlying structure of N-reduced KP hierarchy in the system. Case (2) occurs at the intersection of a number of N = 1 vacua with massless monopoles. This branch of vacua is characterized by having s(+) - 0 or s(-) = 0 where s(+/-) denotes the number of double roots in P-N(x) +/- 2Lambda(N). It is possible to show that the mass gap in fact vanishes at this AD point. We conjecture that it represents a new class of N = 1 superconformal field theory.