Monopole operators and mirror symmetry in three dimensions

Abstract

We study vortex-creating, or monopole, operators in 3d CFTs which are the infrared limit of N = 2 and N = 4 supersymmetric QEDs in three dimensions. Using large-Nf expansion, we construct monopole operators which are primaries of short representations of the superconformal algebra. Mirror symmetry in three dimensions makes a number of predictions about such operators, and our results confirm these predictions. Furthermore, we argue that some of our large-Nf results are exact. This implies, in particular, that certain monopole operators in N = 4 d = 3 SQED with Nf = 1 are free fields. This amounts to a proof of 3d mirror symmetry in a special case. © SISSA/ISAS 2003.