Mirror symmetry on a circle

Abstract

We investigate the small circle, or high temperature, limit of the supersymmetric index identities for the three-dimensional abelian mirror symmetry of SQED. There exist two possible limits, depending on how the parameters of the theory are scaled with the radius of the circle. In both cases the result is qualitatively similar. One side always reduces to the sphere partition function of a two-dimensional $\mathcal{N}=(2,2)$ gauged linear sigma model (GLSM). The opposite side has a two-fold interpretation, either as the sphere partition function of the Landau--Ginzburg (LG) model that is Hori--Vafa dual to the GLSM, or as a Coulomb gas integral for a correlation function of Liouville or Toda CFT. This approach thus provides a systematic way to generate integral identities between partition functions of GLSMs on the one hand, and partition functions of LG models or CFT Coulomb gas integrals on the other. The latter perspective finds useful applications in the recently proposed 2d/2d correspondence, which relates sphere partition functions of unitary 2d $\mathcal{N}=(2,2)$ theories and correlation functions of non-unitary 2d CFTs that both descend from compactifications of a unitary 4d $\mathcal{N}=2$ SCFT. We present an example based on the $(A_{k-1},A_{N-1})$ Argyres--Douglas theories, where the CFT is a non-unitary minimal model. We also give a purely two-dimensional derivation of the identities obtained in the small circle limit which is inspired by the Kapustin--Strassler piecewise derivation of 3d abelian mirror symmetry.