Supersymmetry enhancement by monopole operators

TL;DR

The paper develops a controlled deformation-based method to detect hidden symmetries in strongly coupled 3d SUSY gauge theories by analyzing monopole operators and their spectra. Applied to ABJM and to the IR limit of N=4 d=3 SQCD with adjoint and fundamental matter, it provides evidence for N=8 supersymmetry enhancement via monopole currents and reveals a decoupled free sector in certain cases, consistent with IR duality to N=8 U(N) SYM. The results show enhancement is delicate and restricted to specific parameter choices (k=1,2 for ABJM; N_f=1 for the SQCD model), and they illustrate how non-topological disorder operators can participate in symmetry enhancement. The methodology and findings offer a framework to study hidden global and R-symmetries in a broader class of 3d N≥4 theories and to probe IR dualities in strongly coupled regimes.

Abstract

We describe a method which allows one to study hidden symmetries in a large class of strongly coupled supersymmetric gauge theories in three dimensions. We apply this method to the ABJM theory and to the infrared limit of N=4 SQCD with adjoint and fundamental matter. We show that the U(N) ABJM model with Chern-Simons level k=1 or k=2 has hidden N=8 supersymmetry. Hidden supersymmetry is also shown to occur in N=4 d=3 SQCD with one fundamental and one adjoint hypermultiplet. The latter theory, as well as the U(N) ABJM theory at k=1, are shown to have a decoupled free sector. This provides evidence that both models are dual to the infrared limit of N=8 U(N) super-Yang-Mills theory.