Abstract
We investigate superconformal surface defects in four-dimensional \( \mathcal{N}=2 \) superconformal theories. Each such defect gives rise to a module of the associated chiral algebra and the surface defect Schur index is the character of this module. Various natural chiral algebra operations such as Drinfeld-Sokolov reduction and spectral flow can be interpreted as constructions involving four-dimensional surface defects. We compute the index of these defects in the free hypermultiplet theory and Argyres-Douglas theories, using both infrared techniques involving BPS states, as well as renormalization group flows onto Higgs branches. In each case we find perfect agreement with the predicted characters.
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Córdova, C., Gaiotto, D. & Shao, SH. Surface defects and chiral algebras. J. High Energ. Phys. 2017, 140 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP05(2017)140
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP05(2017)140