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Comments on Chern-Simons contact terms in three dimensions

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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 \( \mathcal{N} = {2} \) 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.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, 76100, Israel

    Cyril Closset & Zohar Komargodski

  2. Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, U.S.A.

    Thomas T. Dumitrescu

  3. Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, 08540, U.S.A.

    Guido Festuccia, Zohar Komargodski & Nathan Seiberg

Authors
  1. Cyril Closset
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  2. Thomas T. Dumitrescu
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  3. Guido Festuccia
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  4. Zohar Komargodski
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  5. Nathan Seiberg
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Correspondence to Cyril Closset.

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ArXiv ePrint: 1206.5218

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Closset, C., Dumitrescu, T.T., Festuccia, G. et al. Comments on Chern-Simons contact terms in three dimensions. J. High Energ. Phys. 2012, 91 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP09(2012)091

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