Breaking conformal invariance — Large N Chern-Simons theory coupled to massive fundamental fermions

We analyze the theory of massive fermions in the fundamental representation coupled to a U(N) Chern-Simons gauge theory at level K. It is done in the large N, large K limits where λ = \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$ \frac{N}{K} $\end{document} is kept fixed. Following [1] we obtain the solution of a Schwinger-Dyson equation for the two point function, the exact expression for the fermion propagator and the partition function at finite temperature. We prove that in the large K limit there exists an infinite set of classically conserved high spin currents also when a mass is introduced, breaking the conformal invariance. In analogy to the seminal work of ’t Hooft on two dimensional QCD, we write down a Bethe-Salpeter equation for the wave function of a “quark anti-quark” bound state. We show that unlike the two dimensional QCD case, the three dimensional Chern-Simons theory does not admit a confining spectrum.