Conformal and non-conformal hyperloop deformations of the 1/2 BPS circle

Abstract

Abstract We construct new large classes of BPS Wilson hyperloops in three-dimensional N $$ \mathcal{N} $$ = 4 quiver Chern-Simons-matter theory on S 3. The main strategy is to start with the 1/2 BPS Wilson loop of this theory, choose any linear combination of the supercharges it preserves, and look for deformations built out of the matter fields that still preserve that supercharge. This is a powerful generalization of a recently developed approach based on deformations of 1/4 and 1/8 BPS bosonic loops, which itself was far more effective at discovering new operators than older methods relying on complicated ansätze. We discover many new moduli spaces of BPS hyperloops preserving varied numbers of supersymmetries and varied subsets of the symmetries of the 1/2 BPS operator. In particular, we find new bosonic operators preserving 2 or 3 supercharges as well as new families of loops that do not share supercharges with any bosonic loops, including subclasses of both 1/8 and 1/4 BPS loops that are conformal.

Keywords

• Chern-Simons Theories
• Supersymmetric Gauge Theory
• Wilson, ’t Hooft and Polyakov loops