Aspects of 3d N=2 Chern-Simons-Matter Theories

Understand

We comment on various aspects of the the dynamics of 3d N=2 Chern-Simons gauge theories and their possible phases.

• Depending on the matter content, real masses and FI parameters, there can be non-compact Higgs or Coulomb branches, compact Higgs or Coulomb branches, and isolated vacua.
• We compute the Witten index of the theories, and show that it does not change when the system undergoes a phase transition.
• We study aspects of monopole operators and solitons in these theories, and clarify subtleties in the soliton collective coordinate quantization.