Chiral Rings of Two-dimensional Field Theories with (0,2) Supersymmetry

This thesis is devoted to a thorough study of chiral rings in two-dimensional (0,2) theories. We first discuss properties of chiral operators in general two-dimensional (0,2) nonlinear sigma models, both in theories twistable to the A/2 or B/2 model, as well as in non-twistable theories. As a special case, we study the quantum sheaf cohomology of Grassmannians as a deformation of the usual quantum cohomology. The deformation corresponds to a (0,2) deformation of the nonabelian gauged linear sigma model whose geometric phase is associated with the Grassmannian. Combined with the classical result, the quantum ring structure is derived from the one-loop effective potential. Supersymmetric localization is also applicable in this case, which proves to be efficient in computing A/2 correlation functions. We then compute chiral operators in general (0,2) nonlinear sigma models, and apply them to the Gadde-Gukov-Putrov triality proposal, which says that certain triples of (0,2) GLSMs should RG flow to nontrivial IR fixed points. As another application, we extend previous works to construct (0,2) Toda-like mirrors to the sigma model engineering Grassmannians.