More on 't Hooft loops in N=4 SYM

TL;DR

This paper explores supersymmetric 't Hooft loop operators in N=4 super Yang-Mills theory, extending known cases, analyzing their duality properties, and providing explicit constructions and perturbative computations.

Contribution

It introduces a general framework for supersymmetric 't Hooft loops, derives BPS conditions, constructs magnetic counterparts of known Wilson loops, and discusses their quantum definitions and perturbative analysis.

Findings

Explicit construction of magnetic counterparts of Wilson loops.

Derivation of BPS conditions for generic line operators.

Perturbative computations of 't Hooft loops to next-to-leading order.

Abstract

We study supersymmetric 't Hooft loop operators in N=4 super Yang-Mills, generalizing the well-known circular 1/2 BPS case and investigating their S-duality properties. We derive the BPS condition for a generic line operator describing pointlike monopoles and discuss its solutions in some particular case. In particular, we present the explicit construction of the magnetic counterpart of Zarembo and DGRT Wilson loops and provide the general dyonic configurations for an abelian gauge group. The quantum definition of these supersymmetric 't Hooft loop operators is carefully discussed and we attempt some computations to next-to-leading order in perturbation theory.