Chern-Simons and RG Flows: Contact with Dualities

TL;DR

This paper computes contact terms in 3D N=2 supersymmetric dual pairs, confirming dualities through localization and exploring new dualities between different gauge groups.

Contribution

It provides explicit calculations of contact terms for various dual pairs, supporting duality proposals and introducing a new duality between unitary and symplectic theories.

Findings

Contact terms match localization results across dual pairs

Dualities extend to theories with fundamental, adjoint, and antisymmetric matter

Proposes a novel duality between unitary and symplectic gauge theories

Abstract

Contact terms in two point functions of global symmetry currents have recently been proposed as a check of Seiberg-like duality in three dimensional supersymmetric field theories. In this paper we compute the contact terms for various N=2 dual pairs in flat space. We show that the results of this computation agree with the ones obtained from localization. We study dual pairs of gauge theories with (anti-)fundamental matter fields, and some special examples of dual pairs with adjoint and antisymmetric matter fields. We also propose a duality between unitary and symplectic gauge theories.