M5-brane sources, holography, and Argyres-Douglas theories
A bstract We initiate a study of the holographic duals of a class of four-dimensional $$\mathcal{N}$$ N = 2 superconformal field theories that are engineered by wrapping M5-branes on a sphere with an irregular puncture. These notably include the strongly-coupled field theories of Argyres-Douglas type. Our solutions are obtained in 7d gauged supergravity, where they take the form of a warped product of AdS 5 and a “half-spindle.” The irregular puncture is modeled by a localized M5-brane source in the internal space of the gravity duals. Our solutions feature a realization of supersymmetry that is distinct from the usual topological twist, as well as an interesting Stückelberg mechanism involving the gauge field associated to a generator of the isometry algebra of the internal space. We check the proposed duality by computing the holographic central charge, the flavor symmetry central charge, and the dimensions of various supersymmetric probe M2-branes, and matching these with the dual Argyres-Douglas field theories. Furthermore, we compute the large- N ’t Hooft anomalies of the field theories using anomaly inflow methods in M-theory, and find perfect agreement with the proposed duality.
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Publication Date:
NSF-PAR ID:
10311171
Journal Name:
Journal of High Energy Physics
Volume:
2021
Issue:
11
ISSN:
1029-8479
2. A bstract We analyze topological mass terms of BF type arising in supersymmetric M-theory compactifications to AdS 5 . These describe spontaneously broken higher-form gauge symmetries in the bulk. Different choices of boundary conditions for the BF terms yield dual field theories with distinct global discrete symmetries. We discuss in detail these symmetries and their ’t Hooft anomalies for 4d $$\mathcal{N}$$ N = 1 SCFTs arising from M5-branes wrapped on a Riemann surface without punctures, including theories from M5-branes at a ℤ 2 orbifold singularity. The anomaly polynomial is computed via inflow and contains background fields for discrete global 0-, 1-, and 2-form symmetries and continuous 0-form symmetries, as well as axionic background fields. The latter are properly interpreted in the context of anomalies in the space of coupling constants.
4. A bstract In flux compactifications of type IIB string theory with D3 and seven-branes, the negative induced D3 charge localized on seven-branes leads to an apparently pathological profile of the metric sufficiently close to the source. With the volume modulus stabilized in a KKLT de Sitter vacuum this pathological region takes over a significant part of the entire compactification, threatening to spoil the KKLT effective field theory. In this paper we employ the Seiberg-Witten solution of pure SU( N ) super Yang-Mills theory to argue that wrapped seven-branes can be thought of as bound states of more microscopic exotic branes. We argue that the low-energy worldvolume dynamics of a stack of n such exotic branes is given by the ( A 1 , A n− 1 ) Argyres-Douglas theory. Moreover, the splitting of the perturbative (in α ′) seven-brane into its constituent branes at the non-perturbative level resolves the apparently pathological region close to the seven-brane and replaces it with a region of $$\mathcal{O}$$ O (1) Einstein frame volume. While this region generically takes up an $$\mathcal{O}$$ O (1) fraction of the compactification in a KKLT de Sitter vacuum we argue that a small flux superpotentialmore »