We compute the thermal free energy in large N U(N) Chern-Simons-matter
theories with matter fields (scalars and/or fermions) in the fundamental
representation, in the large temperature limit. We note that in these theories
the eigenvalue distribution of the holonomy of the gauge field along the
thermal circle does not localize even at very high temperatures, and this
affects the computation significantly. We verify that our results are
consistent with the conjectured dualities between Chern-Simons-matter theories
with scalar fields and with fermion fields, as well as with the strong-weak
coupling duality of the N=2 supersymmetric Chern-Simons-matter theory.Comment: 41 pages, 8 figures. v2: minor corrections, added references. v3:
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