Dynamics of N=2 Supersymmetric Chern-Simons Theories

TL;DR

This paper explores the dynamics of three-dimensional N=2 supersymmetric gauge theories with Chern-Simons couplings, revealing novel phenomena such as Coulomb branch compactification, gauge symmetry enhancement, and new mirror symmetry flows.

Contribution

It demonstrates how Chern-Simons couplings influence the behavior of N=2 theories and shows a method to derive N=2 mirror pairs from N=4 theories via R-symmetry gauging.

Findings

Chern-Simons couplings lead to compact Coulomb branches.

Non-abelian gauge symmetry can be enhanced dynamically.

Mirror theories with N=2 supersymmetry can be obtained from N=4 theories.

Abstract

We discuss several aspects of three dimensional N=2 supersymmetric gauge theories coupled to chiral multiplets. The generation of Chern-Simons couplings at low-energies results in novel behaviour including compact Coulomb branches, non-abelian gauge symmetry enhancement and interesting patterns of dynamically generated potentials. We further show how, given any pair of mirror theories with N=4 supersymmetry, one may flow to a pair of mirror theories with N=2 supersymmetry by gauging a suitable combination of the R-symmetries. The resulting theories again have interesting properties due to Chern-Simons couplings.