MASS DEFORMATIONS OF SUPER YANG-MILLS THEORIES IN D=2+1, AND SUPER-MEMBRANES: A NOTE

Mass deformations of supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories in three spacetime dimensions are considered. The gluons of the theories are made massive by the inclusion of a nonlocal gauge and Poincare invariant mass term due to Alexanian and Nair, while the matter fields are given standard Gaussian mass-terms. It is shown that the dimensional reduction of such mass-deformed gauge theories defined on R-3 or RxT(2) produces matrix quantum mechanics with massive spectra. In particular, all known massive matrix quantum mechanical models obtained by the deformations of dimensional reductions of minimal super Yang-Mills theories in diverse dimensions are shown also to arise from the dimensional reductions of appropriate massive Yang-Mills theories in three space time dimensions. Explicit formulas for the gauge theory actions are provided