Low-dimensional supersymmetric lattice models

We study and simulate N = 2 supersymmetric Wess-Zumino models in one and two dimensions. For any choice of the lattice derivative, the theories can be made manifestly supersymmetric by adding appropriate improvement terms corresponding to discretizations of surface integrals. In one dimension, our simulations show that a model with the Wilson derivative and the Stratonovich prescription for this discretization leads to far better results at finite lattice spacing than other models with Wilson fermions considered in the literature. In particular, we check that fermionic and bosonic masses coincide and the unbroken Ward identities are fulfilled to high accuracy. Equally good results for the effective masses can be obtained in a model with the SLAC derivative (even without improvement terms). In two dimensions we introduce a non-standard Wilson term in such a way that the discretization errors of the kinetic terms are only of order O(a(2)). Masses extracted from the corresponding manifestly supersymmetric model prove to approach their continuum values much quicker than those from a model containing the standard Wilson term. Again, a comparable enhancement can be achieved in a theory using the SLAC derivative. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.