No Arabic abstract
We present new circular Wilson loops in three-dimensional N=4 quiver Chern-Simons-matter theory on S^3. At any given node of the quiver, a two-parameter family of operators can be obtained by opportunely deforming the 1/4 BPS Gaiotto-Yin loop. Including then adjacent nodes, the coupling to the bifundamental matter fields allows to enlarge this family and to construct loop operators based on superconnections. We discuss their classification, which depends on both discrete data and continuous parameters subject to an identification. The resulting moduli spaces are conical manifolds, similar to the conifold of the 1/6 BPS loops of the ABJ(M) theory.
We investigate phases of 3d ${cal N}=2$ Chern-Simons-matter theories, extending to three dimensions the celebrated correspondence between 2d gauged Wess-Zumino-Witten (GWZW) models and non-linear sigma models (NLSMs) with geometric targets. We find that although the correspondence in 3d and 2d are closely related by circle compactification, an important subtlety arises in this process, changing the phase structure of the 3d theory. Namely, the effective theory obtained from the circle compactification of a phase of a 3d ${cal N}=2$ gauge theory is, in general, different from the phase of the 3d ${cal N}=2$ theory on ${mathbb R}^2times S^{1}$, which means taking phases of a 3d gauge theory does not necessarily commute with compactification. We compute the Witten index of each effective theory to check this observation. Furthermore, when the matter fields have the same non-minimal charges, the 3d ${cal N}=2$ Chern-Simons-matter theory with a proper Chern-Simons level will decompose into several identical 2d gauged linear sigma models (GLSMs) for the same target upon reduction to 2d. To illustrate this phenomenon, we investigate how vacua of the 3d gauge theory for a weighted projective space $Wmathbb{P}_{[l,cdots,l]}$ move on the field space when we change the radius of $S^{1}$.
We construct new families of 1/4 BPS Wilson loops in circular quiver $mathcal N=4$ superconformal Chern-Simons-matter (SCSM) theories in three dimensions. They are defined as the holonomy of superconnections that contain non-trivial couplings to scalar and fermions, and cannot be reduced to block-diagonal matrices. Consequently, the new operators cannot be written in terms of double-node Wilson loops, as the ones considered so far in the literature. For particular values of the couplings the superconnection becomes block-diagonal and we recover the known fermionic 1/4 and 1/2 BPS Wilson loops. The new operators are cohomologically equivalent to bosonic 1/4 BPS Wilson loops and are then amenable of exact evaluation via localization techniques. Moreover, in the case of orbifold ABJM theory we identify the corresponding gravity duals for some of the 1/4 and 1/2 BPS Wilson loops.
We consider $3$-dimensional conformal field theories with $U(N)_{kappa}$ Chern Simons gauge fields coupled to bosonic and fermionic matter fields transforming in the fundamental representation of the gauge group. In these CFTs, we compute in the tHooft large $N$ limit and to all orders in the tHooft coupling $lambda= N/ kappa$, the thermal two-point correlation functions of the spin $s=0$, $s=1$ and $s=2$ gauge invariant conformal primary operators. These are the lowest dimension single trace scalar, the $U(1)$ current and the stress tensor operators respectively. Our results furnish additional tests of the conjectured bosonization dualities in these theories at finite temperature.
This is a compact review of recent results on supersymmetric Wilson loops in ABJ(M) and related theories. It aims to be a quick introduction to the state of the art in the field and a discussion of open problems. It is divided into short chapters devoted to different questions and techniques. Some new results, perspectives and speculations are also presented. We hope this might serve as a baseline for further studies of this topic.
We study large N orbifold equivalences involving three-dimensional N=3 and N=4 supersymmetric quiver Chern-Simons-matter theories. The gravity dual of the N=3 Chern-Simons-matter theory is described by AdS4xM7 where the tri-Sasaki manifold M7 is known as the Eschenburg space. We find evidence that a large N orbifold equivalence for the N=4 case continues from the M-theory limit to the weak-coupling limit. For the N=3 case, we find consistent large N equivalences involving a projection changing the nodes of the gauge groups, and also for a projection changing Chern-Simons levels where for the latter projection, the BPS monopole operators behave as expected in large N equivalence. For both cases we show, using the gravity dual, that the critical temperature of the confinement/deconfinement transition does not change and the entropy behaves as expected under the orbifold equivalence. We show that large N orbifold equivalence changing Chern-Simons levels can be explained using the planar equivalence in the mirror dual.