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 non-local 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 $R\times T^2$ 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 spacetime dimensions. Explicit formulae for the gauge theory actions are provided.