Dynamics of N=2 Supersymmetric Chern-Simons 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.