Comments on Chern-Simons Contact Terms in Three Dimensions

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 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.

37 pages, 3 figures; minor changes