Bootstrapping the superconformal index with surface defects

Understand

The analytic properties of the N = 2 superconformal index are given a physical interpretation in terms of certain BPS surface defects, which arise as the IR limit of supersymmetric vortices.

• The residue of the index at a pole in flavor fugacity is interpreted as the index of a superconformal field theory without this flavor symmetry, but endowed with an additional surface defect.
• The residue can be efficiently extracted by acting on the index with a difference operator of Ruijsenaars-Schneider type.
• By imposing the associativity constraints of S-duality, we are then able to evaluate the index of all generalized quiver theories of type A, for generic values of the three superconformal fugacities, with or without surface defects.