A Small Deformation of a Simple Theory

TL;DR

This paper investigates a mild deformation of the Argyres-Douglas N=2 SCFT, revealing that the resulting IR theory is an interacting N=1 SCFT with small central charges, providing insights into its spectrum.

Contribution

It introduces a specific relevant deformation of the AD theory and analyzes its effects, showing the IR theory remains close to the original in certain anomaly and index measures.

Findings

The deformation causes only a small change in the 'a' anomaly.

The IR index matches UV contributions to high order.

The IR theory is an interacting N=1 SCFT with small central charges.

Abstract

We study an interesting relevant deformation of the simplest interacting N=2 SCFT---the original Argyres-Douglas (AD) theory. We argue that, although this deformation is not strictly speaking Banks-Zaks like (certain operator dimensions change macroscopically), there are senses in which it constitutes a mild deformation of the parent AD theory: the exact change in the "a" anomaly is small and is essentially saturated at one loop. Moreover, contributions from IR operators that have a simple description in the UV theory reproduce a particular limit of the IR index to a remarkably high order. These results lead us to conclude that the IR theory is an interacting N=1 SCFT with particularly small "a" and "c" central charges and that this theory sheds some interesting light on the spectrum of its AD parent.