Dualities and flavored indices of M2-brane SCFTs

TL;DR

This paper explores dualities among M2-brane SCFTs in M-theory, analyzing flavored supersymmetric indices to identify new dualities and providing explicit index formulas and generating functions for various theories.

Contribution

It introduces new dualities of M2-brane SCFTs by detailed index analysis and derives explicit formulas for Coulomb and Higgs limits of indices for specific theories.

Findings

Matching of operators and symmetries under dualities

Explicit formulas for Coulomb limit indices of ADHM and dual quiver CS theories

A refined generating function for plane partitions with trace N

Abstract

We study various conjectural dual descriptions of a stack of M2-branes in M-theory including ADHM, ABJ(M), BLG, discrete gauge theories and quiver Chern-Simons (CS) theories and propose several new dualities of the M2-brane SCFTs by analyzing flavored supersymmetric indices in detail. The mapping of local operators, Coulomb, Higgs and mixed branch operators as well as global symmetries under the dualities are obtained from the precise matching of the indices. Furthermore, we find closed form expressions for the Coulomb limit of the indices of the $U(N)$ ADHM theory and the dual quiver CS theory for arbitrary $N$ and propose a refined generating function for plane partitions with trace $N$. For the quiver CS theories we also find an infinite-sum expression for the Higgs limit of the indices which is more useful than the original expression.