ABJM Membrane Instanton from Pole Cancellation Mechanism

Abstract: The coefficients of the membrane instantons in the ABJM theory are known to be quadratic polynomials of the chemical potential. We show that, after deforming the ABJM theory into more general superconformal Chern-Simons theories labelled by (q,p) where the original ABJM theory corresponds to (q,p)=(1,1), we can decompose the membrane instanton into three types of non-perturbative effects with constant coefficients independent of the chemical potential. We find that, although these constants contain poles at certain values of q and p including the ABJM case, all of the poles cancel among themselves and the finite quadratic polynomial coefficients are reproduced at these values. This is similar to what happens between the membrane instantons and the worldsheet instantons in the ABJM theory.