tt* geometry in 3 and 4 dimensions

We consider the vacuum geometry of supersymmetric theories with 4 supercharges, on a flat toroidal geometry. The 2 dimensional vacuum geometry is known to be captured by the tt* geometry. In the case of 3 dimensions, the parameter space is (T2 × $$ \mathbb{R} $$)N and the vacuum geometry turns out to be a solution to a generalization of monopole equations in 3N dimensions where the relevant topological ring is that of line operators. We compute the generalization of the 2d cigar amplitudes, which lead to S2 × S1 or S3 partition functions which are distinct from the supersymmetric partition functions on these spaces, but reduce to them in a certain limit. We show the sense in which these amplitudes generalize the structure of 3d Chern-Simons theories and 2d RCFT’s. In the case of 4 dimensions the parameter space is of the form XM,N = (T3 × $$ \mathbb{R} $$)M × T3N , and the vacuum geometry is a solution to a mixture of generalized monopole equations and generalized instanton equations (known as hyper-holomorphic connections). In this case the topological rings are associated to surface operators. We discuss the physical meaning of the generalized Nahm transforms which act on all of these geometries.