English

Comments on Chern-Simons Contact Terms in Three Dimensions

High Energy Physics - Theory 2015-06-05 v2

Abstract

We study contact terms of conserved currents and the energy-momentum tensor in three-dimensional quantum field theory. They are associated with Chern-Simons terms for background fields. While the integer parts of these contact terms are ambiguous, their fractional parts are meaningful physical observables. In N=2 supersymmetric theories with a U(1)_R symmetry some of these observables lead to an anomaly. Moreover, they can be computed exactly using localization, leading to new tests of dualities.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1206.5218,
  title  = {Comments on Chern-Simons Contact Terms in Three Dimensions},
  author = {Cyril Closset and Thomas T. Dumitrescu and Guido Festuccia and Zohar Komargodski and Nathan Seiberg},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1206.5218},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

37 pages, 3 figures; minor changes

R2 v1 2026-06-21T21:24:02.518Z