Gauge coupling instability and dynamical mass generation in N=1 three-dimensional supersymmetric QED

Using superfield Dyson-Schwinger equations, we compute the infrared dynamics of the semi-amputated full vertex, corresponding to the effective running gauge coupling, in N-flavor N51 three-dimensional supersymmetric QED. It is shown that the presence of a supersymmetry-preserving mass for the matter multiplet stabilizes the infrared gauge coupling against oscillations present in the massless case, and we therefore infer that the massive vacuum is thus selected at the level of the ~quantum! effective action. We further demonstrate that such a mass can indeed be generated dynamically in a self-consistent way by appealing to the superfield Dyson-Schwinger gap equation for the full matter propa…