M2-Branes in N = 3 Harmonic Superspace

Abstract

We give a brief account of the recently proposed N = 3 superfield formulation of the N = 6, 3D superconformal theory of Aharony et al (ABJM) describing a low-energy limit of the system of multiple M2-branes on the AdS4×S7/Zk background. This formulation is given in harmonic N = 3 superspace and reveals a number of surprising new features. In particular, the sextic scalar potential of ABJM arises at the on-shell component level as the result of eliminating appropriate auxiliary fields, while there is no explicit superpotential at the off-shell superfield level.