M2-Branes in N=3 Harmonic Superspace

TL;DR

This paper presents an N=3 harmonic superspace formulation of the N=6 ABJM superconformal theory, revealing new features such as the origin of the scalar potential without an explicit superpotential.

Contribution

It introduces a novel N=3 superfield approach to the ABJM theory, clarifying the emergence of the scalar potential from auxiliary fields.

Findings

Scalar potential arises from auxiliary fields on-shell

No explicit superpotential at off-shell level

Harmonic N=3 superspace formulation simplifies the theory

Abstract

We give a brief account of the recently proposed N=3 superfield formulation of the N=6, 3D superconformal theory of Aharony et al (ABJM) describing a low-energy limit of the system of multiple M2-branes on the AdS_4 x S^7/Z_k background. This formulation is given in harmonic N=3 superspace and reveals a number of surprising new features. In particular, the sextic scalar potential of ABJM arises at the on-shell component level as the result of eliminating appropriate auxiliary fields, while there is no any explicit superpotential at the off-shell superfield level.