National Taiwan University and Cambridge

Surface Defects and Dualities in Supersymmetric Gauge Theories

Heng- Yu Chen

(National Taiwan University and Cambridge)

Abstract

I will begin by introducing different surface defects in 4d N=2 supersymmetric gauge theories, and discuss how the 4d supersymmetry breaking effect can descend into the 2d world volume theories of the surface defects.

I will then discuss how certain surface defects can naturally appear as saddle point solutions in 4d N=1 and N=2 superconformal indices, also confirm this with explicit 2d elliptic genus calculations. I will wrap up the talk by discussing their roles in different field theoretic dualities.