θ and the η ^′ in large N supersymmetric QCD

We study the large N θ dependence and the η^′ potential in supersymmetric QCD with small soft SUSY-breaking terms. Known exact results in SUSY QCD are found to reflect a variety of expectations from large N perturbation theory, including the presence of branches and the behavior of theories with matter (both with N_f ≪ N and N_f ∼ N ). However, there are also striking departures from ordinary QCD and the conventional large N description: instanton effects, when under control, are not exponentially suppressed at large N , and branched structure in supersymmetric QCD is always associated with approximate discrete symmetries. We suggest that these differences motivate further study of large N QCD on the lattice.