No label defined (Q3974909)

[For the entire collection see Zbl 0724.00017.] In quantum field theories with globally supersymmetric lagrangian, the general features of the effective potential are strongly reminiscent of an underlying complex structure on which the complexification of the internal symmetry group (a Lie group of unitary matrices) acts linearly. Some recent results are reviewed, which show how, at the classical level, the possible patterns of spontaneous (super)symmetry breaking are constrained by this fact and which are its consequences on some possible degeneracies of the vacuum state and mass spectrum of the theory. Most of the results are derived as more or less immediate consequences of the Kempf and Ness theory [cf. \textit{G. Kempf} and \textit{L. Ness}, in Algebraic geometry, Proc. Summer Meet., Copenh. 1978, Lect. Notes Math. 732, 233- 243 (1979; Zbl 0407.22012)]; when possible, however, elementary proofs are given, in order to make the issues accessible to those who are not much familiar with the language of algebraic geometry.