Vortices and 3 dimensional dualities

Abstract

We study a supersymmetric partition function of topological vortices in 3d N=4,3 gauge theories on R^2 x S^1, and use it to explore Seiberg-like dualities with Fayet-Iliopoulos deformations. We provide a detailed support of these dualities and also clarify the roles of vortices. The N=4 partition function confirms the proposed Seiberg duality and suggests nontrivial extensions, presumably at novel IR fixed points with enhanced symmetries. The N=3 theories with nonzero Chern-Simons term also have non-topological vortices in the partially broken phases, which are essential for the Seiberg duality invariance of the spectrum. We use our partition function to confirm some properties of non-topological vortices via Seiberg duality in a simple case.