The effective prepotential of N = 2 supersymmetric SO(Nc) and Sp(Nc) gauge theories Original Research Article

We calculate the effective prepotentials for N = 2 supersymmetric SO(Nc) and Sp(Nc) gauge theories, with an arbitrary number of hypermultiplets in the defining representation, from restrictions of the prepotentials for suitable N = 2 supersymmetric gauge theories with unitary gauge groups. (This extends previous work in which the prepotential for N = 2 supersymmetric SU(Nc) gauge theories was evaluated from the exact solution constructed out of spectral curves.) The prepotentials have to all orders the logarithmic singularities of the one-loop perturbative corrections, as expected from non-renormalization theorems. We evaluate explicitly the contributions of 1- and 2-instanton processes.