Chern-Simons Vortices in Supergravity

Abstract

We study supersymmetric vortex solutions in three-dimensional abelian gauged supergravity. First, we construct the general U(1)-gauged D=3, N=2 supergravity whose scalar sector is an arbitrary Kahler manifold with U(1) isometry. This construction clarifies the connection between local supersymmetry and the specific forms of some scalar potentials previously found in the literature -- in particular, it provides the locally supersymmetric embedding of the abelian Chern-Simons Higgs model. We show that the Killing spinor equations admit rotationally symmetric vortex solutions with asymptotically conical geometry which preserve half of the supersymmetry.