Induced scalar potentials for hypermultiplets

Charged BPS hypermultiplets can develop a non-trivial self-interaction in the Coulomb branch of the N= 2 supersymmetric gauge theory, whereas neutral BPS hypermultiplets in the Higgs branch may also have a non-trivial self-interaction in the presence of Fayet-Iliopoulos terms. The exact hypermultiplet low-energy effective action (LEEA) takes the form of the non-linear sigma-model (NLSM) with a hyper-Kahler metric. A non-trivial scalar potential is also quantum-mechanically generated at non-vanishing central charges, either perturbatively (Coulomb branch), or non-perturbatively (Higgs branch). We calculate the effective scalar potentials for (i) a single charged hypermultiplet in the Coulomb branch and (ii) a single neutral hypermultiplet in the Higgs branch. The first case corresponds to the NLSM with the Taub-NUT (or KK-monopole) metric for the kinetic LEEA, whereas the second one is attached to the NLSM having the Eguchi-Hanson instanton metric. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.