Aspects of monopole operators in N= 6 Chern-Simons theory

Abstract

We study local operators of U(N) × U(N) N= 6 Chern-Simons-matter theory including a class of magnetic monopole operators. To take into account the interaction of monopoles and basic fields for large Chern-Simons level k, we consider the appropriate perturbation theory in 1/k which reliably describes small excitations around protected chiral operators. We also compute the superconformal index with some simple monopole operators and show that it agrees with the recent result obtained from localization. For this agreement, it is crucial that excitations of gauge fields and some matter scalars mix, which is described classically by odd dimensional self-duality like equations. © 2009 SISSA.