I study finite-temperature $\mathcal N=1$ super Yang-Mills for any gauge group $G=A_N, B_N, C_N, D_N, E_{6,7,8},F_4,G_2$, compactified from four dimensions on a torus, $\mathbb R^2\times S^1_L\times S^1_β$. I examine in particular the low temperature regime $L\llβ=1/T$, where $L$ is the length of the spatial circle with periodic boundary conditions and with anti-periodic boundary conditions for the adjoint gauginos along the thermal cycle $S^1_β$. For small such $L$ we are in a regime were semiclassical calculations can be performed and a transition occurs at $T_c$ much smaller than $1/NL$. The transition is mediated by the competition between non-perturbative objects including 'exotic' topological molecules: neutral and magnetic bions composed of BPS and KK monopole constituents, with $r=rank(G)$ different charges in the co-root lattice of the gauge group $G$, and the perturbative electrically charged W-bosons (along with their wino superpartners). I determine a duality to a double Coulomb gas of neutral and magnetic bions of different charges of their constituent monopole-instantons, and W-bosons of both scalar and electric charges. Aharanov-Bohm interactions exist between magnetic bions and W-bosons, and scalar charges of W-bosons and neutral bions attract like charges, as opposed to the magnetic and electric charges where like charges repel. It is hoped in the future that lattice studies of this Coulomb gas can be done as in [1] for all gauge groups. It is hoped that a dual lattice 'affine' XY model with symmetry breaking perturbations can also be found in future studies of general gauge group as done in [1] for $SU(2)$.
The chiral and deconfinement phase transitions are investigated within the variational Hamiltonian approach to QCD in Coulomb gauge. The temperature $β^{- 1}$ is introduced by compactifying a spatial dimension. Thereby the whole temperature dependence is encoded in the vacuum state on the spatial manifold $\mathbb{R}^2 \times S^1 (β)$. The chiral quark condensate and the dual quark condensate (dressed Polyakov loop) are calculated as function of the temperature. From their inflection points the pseudo-critical temperatures for the chiral and deconfinement crossover transitions are determined. …
The deconfinement phase transition of SU(2) Yang--Mills theory is investigated in the Hamiltonian approach in Coulomb gauge assuming a quasi-particle picture for the grand canonical gluon ensemble. The thermal equilibrium state is found by minimizing the free energy with respect to the quasi-gluon energy. Above the deconfinement phase transition the ghost form factor remains infrared divergent but its infrared exponent is approximately halved, while the gluon energy, being infrared divergent in the confined phase, becomes infrared finite in the deconfined phase. For the effective gluon mass we…
The deconfinement phase transition of SU(2) Yang-Mills theory is investigated in the Hamiltonian approach in Coulomb gauge assuming a quasi-particle picture for the grand canonical gluon ensemble. The thermal equilibrium state is found by minimizing the free energy with respect to the quasi-gluon energy. At the deconfinement phase transition the gluon energy, being infrared divergent in the confined phase, becomes infrared finite in the deconfined phase, while the ghost form factor remains infrared divergent in the deconfined phase but its infrared exponent is approximately halved. Using the l…
Recent results obtained for the deconfinement phase transition within the Hamiltonian approach to Yang-Mills theory are reviewed. Assuming a quasiparticle picture for the grand canonical gluon ensemble the thermal equilibrium state is found by minimizing the free energy with respect to the quasi-gluon energy. The deconfinement phase transition is accompanied by a drastic change of the infrared exponents of the ghost and gluon propagators. Above the phase transition the ghost form factor remains infrared divergent but its infrared exponent is approximately halved. The gluon energy being infrare…
It is an interesting question whether a given infra-red duality between quantum field theories can be explained in terms of other more elementary dualities. For example recently it has been shown that mirror dualities can be obtained by iterative applications of Seiberg-like dualities. In this paper we continue this line of investigation focusing on theories with tensor matter. In such cases one can apply the idea of deconfinement, which consists of trading the tensor matter for extra gauge nodes by means of a suitable elementary duality. This gives an auxiliary dual frame which can then be ma…
We apply the technique of sequential deconfinement to the four dimensional $\mathcal{N}\!=\!1$ $Usp(2N)$ gauge theory with an antisymmetric field and $2F$ fundamentals. The fully deconfined frame is a length-$N$ quiver. We use this deconfined frame to prove the known self-duality of $Usp(2N)$ with an antisymmetric field and $8$ fundamentals. Along the way we encounter a subtlety: in certain quivers with degenerate holomorphic operators, a naive application of Seiberg duality rules leads to an incorrect superpotential or chiral ring. We also consider the reduction to $3d$ $\mathcal{N}\!=\!2$ th…
The equation of state of a one-dimensional classical nonrelativistic Coulomb gas of particles in the adjoint representation of SU(2) is given. The problem is solved both with and without sources in the fundamental representation at either end of the system. The gas exhibits confining properties at low densities and temperatures and deconfinement in the limit of high densities and temperatures. However, there is no phase transition to a regime where the string tension vanishes identically; true deconfinement only happens for infinite densities and temperatures. In the low density, low temperatu…
Romelsberger's index has been argued to be an RG-invariant and, therefore, Seiberg-duality-invariant object that counts protected operators in the IR SCFT of an N=1 theory. These claims have so far passed all tests. In fact, it remains possible that this index is a perfect discriminant of duality. The investigation presented here bolsters such optimism. It is shown that the conditions of total ellipticity, which are needed for the mathematical manifestation of duality, are equivalent to the conditions ensuring non-anomalous gauge and flavor symmetries and the matching of (most) 't Hooft anomal…
We introduce a duality between two-dimensional XY-spin models with symmetry-breaking perturbations and certain four-dimensional SU(2)and SU(2)/Z_2 gauge theories, compactified on a small spatial circle R^(1,2) x S^1, and considered at temperatures near the deconfinement transition. In a Euclidean set up, the theory is defined on R^2 x T^2. Similarly, thermal gauge theories of higher rank are dual to new families of "affine" XY-spin models with perturbations. For rank two, these are related to models used to describe the melting of a 2d crystal with a triangular lattice. The connection is made …
We study finite-temperature N=1 SU(2) super Yang-Mills theory, compactified on a spatial circle of size L with supersymmetric boundary conditions. In the semiclassical small-L regime, a deconfinement transition occurs at T_c <<1/L. The transition is due to a competition between non-perturbative topological "molecules"---magnetic and neutral bion-instantons---and electrically charged W-bosons and superpartners. Compared to deconfinement in non-supersymmetric QCD(adj) arXiv:1112.6389, the novelty is the relevance of the light modulus scalar field. It mediates interactions between neutral bions (…
We study the confinement/deconfinement transition in a strongly coupled system triggered by an independent symmetry-breaking quantum phase transition in gauge/gravity duality. The gravity dual is an Einstein-scalar-dilaton system with AdS near-boundary behavior and soft wall interior at zero scalar condensate. We study the cases of neutral and charged condensate separately. In the former case the condensation breaks the discrete $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry while a charged condensate breaks the continuous $U(1)$ symmetry. After the condensation of the order parameter, the non-zero vacuum expectatio…
Earlier, two of us and M. Unsal [arXiv:1112.6389] showed that some 4d gauge theories, compactified on a small spatial circle of size L and considered at temperatures 1/beta near deconfinement, are dual to 2d "affine" XY-spin models. We use the duality to study deconfinement in SU(3)/Z_3 theories with n_f>1 massless adjoint Weyl fermions, QCD(adj) on R^2 x S^1_beta x S^1_L. The"affine" XY-model describes two "spins" - compact scalars taking values in the SU(3) root lattice, with nearest-neighbor interactions and subject to an "external field" preserving the topological Z_3^t and a discrete Z_3^…
We suggest an alternative approach to deconfine N =1 SU(N) supersymmetric gauge theory with a symmetric tensor, fundamentals, anti-fundamentals, and no superpotential. It is found that although the dual prescription derived by this new method of deconfinement is different from that by the original method, both dual prescriptions are connected by duality transformations. By deforming the theory, it is shown that both dual theories flow properly so that the Seiberg's duality is preserved.
We focus on the massive Thirring model in 1+1 dimensions at finite temperature and non-zero chemical potential, and comment on some parallels between this model and QCD. In QCD, calculations of physical quantities such as transport coefficients are extremely difficult. In the massive Thirring model, similar calculations are greatly simplified by exploiting the duality which exists with the sine-Gordon model and its relation, at high temperature, to the exactly solvable classical Coulomb gas on the line.
The problem of computing the thermodynamic properties of a one-dimensional gas of particles which transform in the adjoint representation of the gauge group and interact through non-Abelian electric fields is formulated and solved in the large $N$ limit. The explicit solution exhibits a first order confinement-deconfinement phase transition with computable properties and describes two dimensional adjoint QCD in the limit where matter field masses are large.
We consider the N=4 SU(N) Super Yang Mills theory on the Coulomb branch with gauge symmetry broken to S(U(N_1) x U(N_2)). By integrating the W particles, the effective action near the IR SU(N_i) conformal fixed points is seen to be a deformation of the Super Yang Mills theory by a non-renormalized, irrelevant, dimension 8 operator. The correction to the two-point function of the dilaton field dual operator near the IR is related to a three-point function of chiral primary operators at the conformal fixed points and agrees with the classical gravity prediction, including the numerical factor.
From continuum studies it is known that the Coulomb string tension $σ_C$ gives an upper bound for the physical (Wilson) string tension $σ_W$ [D. Zwanziger, Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 102001 (2003)]. How does however such relationship translate to the lattice? In this paper we give evidence that there, while the two string tensions are related at zero temperature, they decouple at finite temperature. More precisely, we show that on the lattice the Coulomb gauge confinement scenario is always tied to the spatial string tension, which is known to survive the deconfinement phase transition and to cause …
The variational Hamiltonian approach to QCD in Coulomb gauge is reviewed and the essential results obtained in recent years are summarized. First the results for the vacuum sector are discussed, with a special emphasis on the mechansim of confinement and chiral symmetry breaking. Then the deconfinement phase transition is described by introducing temperature in the Hamiltonian approach via compactification of one spatial dimension. The effective action for the Polyakov loop is calculated and the order of the phase transition as well as the critical temperatures are obtained for the color group…
We study low-energy dynamics of three-dimensional $\mathcal{N}=2$ $SU(N)$ "chiral" gauge theories with $F$ fundamental and $\bar{F}$ anti-fundamental matters without a Chern-Simons term. Compared to a naive semi-classical analysis of the Coulomb branch, its quantum structure is highly richer than expected due to so-called "dressed" Coulomb branch (monopole) operators. We propose dualities and confinement phases for the "chiral" $SU(N)$ theories. The theories with $N>F > \bar{F}$ exhibit spontaneous supersymmetry breaking. The very many Coulomb branch operators generally remain exactly massless…
We analyze S-duality of orientifolds of the Calabi-Yau cone over the first del Pezzo surface ($dP_1$). The S-duals of known phases, described by quiver gauge theories, contain intrinsically strongly-coupled sectors. These sectors are realized by a higher multiplicity intersection of NS5 branes and D5 branes atop an O5 plane, and can be thought of as stuck at the infinite coupling point between two Seiberg-dual gauge theories. We argue that such sectors appear generically in orientifolds of non-orbifold singularities, where in many examples every orientifold phase contains such a sector. Unders…
I report on recent results obtained within the Hamiltonian approach to QCD in Coulomb gauge. Furthermore this approach is compared to recent lattice data, which were obtained by an alternative gauge fixing method and which show an improved agreement with the continuum results. By relating the Gribov confinement scenario to the center vortex picture of confinement it is shown that the Coulomb string tension is tied to the spatial string tension. For the quark sector a vacuum wave functional is used which explicitly contains the coupling of the quarks to the transverse gluons and which results i…
The purpose of this paper is to perform a quantitative check of gauge theory - gravity duality in a nonconformal, nonsupersymmetric context. In order to do so we define k5, an object extracted from the Wilson Loop, that plays the role of Coulomb's constant for SU(N) gauge theories in five dimensions and we argue that one of its virtues is that it could be minimally sensitive to N. This allows us to compute k5 on one hand from the gravitational backreation of a large number N of D4-branes, and on the other from a lattice mean-field expansion for N=2. We find a 2% numerical agreement between the…
In the weak coupling limit of ${\rm SU}(N)$ Yang-Mills theory and the ${\rm O}(N)$ vector model, explicit state counting allows us to demonstrate the existence of a partially deconfined phase: $M$ of $N$ colors deconfine, and $\frac{M}{N}$ gradually grows from zero (confinement) to one (complete deconfinement). We point out that the mechanism admits a simple interpretation in the form of spontaneous breaking of gauge symmetry. In terms of the dual gravity theory, such breaking occurs during the formation of a black hole. We speculate whether the breaking and restoration of gauge symmetry can s…
We elaborate on quantum moduli spaces in 3d $\mathcal{N}=2$ $SU(N)_k$ Chern-Simons gauge theories with $F$ fundamental and $\bar{F}$ anti-fundamental matter fields. The quantum flat direction on the Coulomb branch differs so much from the classical one and from the one of the vector-like theories. In many cases, the Coulomb branch is parametrized by the dressed monopoles. As is found from the computation of the superconformal index, these dressed operators at first sight appear to be dressed by massive elementary fields which don't seem to contribute to the low-energy physics. We argue that th…
We show that there are two different dualities of two dimensional gauge theories with N=(2,2) supersymmetry. One is basically a consequence of 3d mirror symmetry. The non-linear sigma model with Calabi-Yau target space on the Higgs branch of the gauge theory is mapped into an equivalent non-linear sigma model on the Coulomb branch of the dual theory, realizing a T-dual target space with torsion. The second duality is genuine to two dimensions. In addition to swapping Higgs and Coulomb branch it trades twisted for untwisted multiplets, implying a sign flip of the left moving U(1)_R charge. Succ…
I report on recent results obtained within the Hamiltonian approach to QCD in Coulomb gauge. By relating the Gribov confinement scenario to the center vortex picture of confinement it is shown that the Coulomb string tension is tied to the spatial string tension. For the quark sector a vacuum wave functional is used which results in variational equations which are free of ultraviolet divergences. The variational approach is extended to finite temperatures by compactifying a spatial dimension. For the chiral and deconfinement phase transition pseudo-critical temperatures of 170 MeV and 198 MeV,…
We study the ratio of pairs of adjacent correlators of Coulomb-branch operators in $SU(2)$ $\mathcal{N}=2$ SQCD with four flavors within the framework of the Large Quantum Number Expansion. Capitalizing on the order-by-order S-duality invariance of the large-R-charge expansion we compute ab initio the dependence of the leading large-$\mathcal{J}$ behavior on the marginal coupling $τ$ and we find excellent agreement with numerical estimates from localization.
In this paper we review some results on the generalization of the gauge/gravity duality to include fundamental matter by means of probe branes. We compute the meson spectrum of maximally supersymmetric gauge theories in several dimensions, both in the Coulomb and Higgs branch. We also study the addition of flavor and compute the meson spectrum for non-commutative theories. Additionally, we present a thorough search of supersymmetric embeddings of probe branes in the Klebanov-Witten model.
In this article, in the framework of an analytical approach and with help of the generalized version of the Hurwitz transformation the five--dimensional bound system composed of the Yang monople coupled to a particle of the isospin by SU(2) and Coulomb interaction is constructed from the eight-dimensional quantum oscillator. The generalized Runge-Lentz vector and the SO(6) group of the hidden symmetry are established. It is also shown that group of hidden symmetry makes it possible to calculate the spectrum of system by a pure algebraic method.
Below the deconfinement phase transition large $N_c$ QCD is expected to be a very viscous hadronic fluid because both the shear and bulk viscosity to entropy density ratio, $η/s,ζ/s \sim N_c^2$. In this letter I show that $η/s \sim N_c^2$ in the confined phase of holographic models of QCD at large $N_c$ defined in the supergravity approximation. Our results show that the gauge/string duality can be used to describe not only nearly perfect fluids but also extremely viscous systems such as a cold gas of glueballs.
We test the recent claim that supersymmetric matrix quantum mechanics with mass deformation preserving maximal supersymmetry can be used to study N=4 super Yang-Mills theory on RxS^3 in the planar limit. When the mass parameter is large, we can integrate out all the massive fluctuations around a particular classical solution, which corresponds to RxS^3. The resulting effective theory for the gauge field moduli at finite temperature is studied both analytically and numerically, and shown to reproduce the deconfinement phase transition in N=4 super Yang-Mills theory on RxS^3 at weak coupling. Th…
We study an infinite family of N=2 $Sp(2n)$ gauge theories that naturally arise from the D3-brane probe dynamics in F-theory. The matter sector consists of four fundamental and one antisymmetric tensor hyper multiplets. We propose that, in the limit of vanishing bare masses, the theory has exact $SO(8)\sdtimes SL(2,Z)$ duality. We examine the semiclassical BPS spectrum in the Coulomb phase by quantizing various monopole moduli space dynamics, and show that it is indeed consistent with the exact S-duality.
We study N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills (SYM) theory with gauge group SU(2) compactified to three dimensions on a circle of circumference beta. The eight fermion terms in the effective action on the Coulomb branch are determined exactly, for all beta, assuming the existence of an interacting Spin(8) invariant fixed point at the origin. The resulting formulae are manifestly invariant under the SL(2,Z) duality of four dimensional N=4 SYM and lead to interesting quantitative predictions for instanton effects in gauge theory and in Type II string theory.
We analyze the Coulomb phase of theories of $N=2$ SQCD with $SU(N_c)$ gauge groups which are conjectured to have exact electric-magnetic duality. We discuss the duality transformation of the particle spectrum, emphasizing the differences between the general case and the $SU(2)$ case. Some difficulties associated with the definition of the duality transformation for a general gauge group are discussed. We compute the classical monopole spectrum of these theories, and when it is possible we use it to check the consistency of the duality. Generally these theories may have phase transitions betwee…
We consider the low-energy effective action for the Coulomb phase of an $N = 2$ supersymmetric gauge theory with a rank one gauge group. The $N = 2$ superspace formalism is naturally invariant under an $SL(2, {\bf Z})$ group of duality transformations, regardless of the form of the action. The leading and next to leading terms in the long distance expansion of the action are given by the holomorphic prepotential and a real analytic function respectively. The latter is shown to be modular invariant with respect to $SL(2, {\bf Z})$.
We discuss type I -- heterotic duality in four-dimensional models obtained as a Coulomb phase of the six-dimensional U(16) orientifold model compactified on T^2 with arbitrary SU(16) Wilson lines. We show that Kahler potentials, gauge threshold corrections and the infinite tower of higher derivative F-terms agree in the limit that corresponds to weak coupling, large T^2 heterotic compactifications. On the type I side, all these quantities are completely determined by the spectrum of N=2 BPS states that originate from D=6 massless superstring modes.
We study the 2d N = 4 gauge theory descriptions of little strings on type II NS5- branes. The IIB strings on N NS5-branes are described by the N = (4,4) gauge theories, whose Higgs branch CFTs on U(N) instanton moduli spaces are relevant. The IIA strings are described by N = (4,4) circular A_{N-1} quiver theories, whose Coulomb branch CFTs are relevant. We study new N = (0,4) quiver gauge theories for the IIA strings, which make it easier to study some infrared observables. In particular, we show that the elliptic genera of the IIA / IIB strings precisely map to each other by T-duality.
We investigate the phase structures of various N=1 supersymmetric gauge theories including even the exceptional gauge group from the viewpoint of superconvergence of the gauge field propagator. Especially we analyze in detail whether a new type of duality recently discovered by Oehme in $SU(N_c)$ gauge theory coupled to fundamental matter fields can be found in more general gauge theories with more general matter representations or not. The result is that in the cases of theories including matter fields in only the fundamental representation, Oehme's duality holds but otherwise it does not. In…
We investigate self-dualities in three-dimensional $\mathcal{N}=2$ supersymmetric gauge theories. The electric and magnetic theories share the same gauge group. The examples include $SU(2N)$, $SO(7)$ and $SO(8)$ with various matter contents. The duality exchanges the role of the baryon and Coulomb branch operators in some examples. In other examples, the Coulomb branch operator becomes an elementary field on the dual side. These self-dualities in turn teach us a correct quantum structure of the Coulomb moduli space of vacua. Some dualities show symmetry enhancement.
We analyze the low energy behavior of N=1 supersymmetric gauge theories with SU(N_c) x SU(N_c) gauge group and a Landau-Ginzburg type superpotential. These theories contain fundamentals transforming under one of the gauge groups as well as bifundamental matter which transforms as a fundamentals under each. We obtain the parametrization of the gauge coupling on the Coulomb branch in terms of a hyperelliptic curve. The derivation of this curve involves making use of Seiberg's duality for SQCD as well as the classical constraints for N_f=N_c+1 and the quantum modified constraints for N_f=N_c.
It was conjectured some time ago that an effective description of the Coulomb-confinement transition in compact U(1) lattice gauge field theory could be described by scalar QED obtained by soft breaking of the N=2 Seiberg-Witten model down to N=0 in the strong coupling region where monopoles are light. In two previous works this idea was presented at a qualitative level. In this work we analyze in detail the conjecture and obtain encouraging quantitative agreement with the numerical determination of the monopole mass and the dual photon mass in the vicinity of the Coulomb to confining phase tr…
We study the low energy behaviour of N=(2,2) supersymmetric gauge theories in 1+1 dimensions, with orthogonal and symplectic gauge groups and matters in the fundamental representation. We observe supersymmetry breaking in super-Yang-Mills theory and in theories with small numbers of flavors. For larger numbers of flavors, we discover duality between regular theories with different gauge groups and matter contents, where regularity refers to absence of quantum Coulomb branch. The result is applied to study families of superconformal field theories that can be used for superstring compactificati…
We discuss non-trivial fixed points of the renormalization group with dual descriptions in $N=4$ gauge theories in three dimensions. This new duality acts as mirror symmetry, exchanging the Higgs and Coulomb branches of the theories. Quantum effects on the Coulomb branch arise classically on the Higgs branch of the dual theory. We present examples of dual theories whose Higgs/Coulomb branch are the ALE spaces and whose Coulomb/Higgs branches are the moduli space of instantons of the corresponding $ADE$ gauge group. In particular, we show that in three dimensions small $E_8$ instantons in strin…
We calculate corrections to gluon scattering amplitudes in a Coulomb phase using gauge/string duality. The Coulomb phase considered is a maximal rank breaking of $SU(n_1+n_2)\to SU(n_1)\times SU(n_2) \times U(1)$. This problem therefore has 3 scales involved: 1) the scale of the massive fields $M_W$ arising from the spontaneous breaking of the gauge group; 2) The scale of the scattering, characterized by the Mandelstam variables $s,t,u$; 3) The IR regulator $m_{IR}$. We find corrections in the hard scattering limit $ |s|,|t|,|u|\gg m_{IR}^2 \gg M_W^2$, and also find below threshold corrections…
We use the AdS/CFT duality to study the special point on the Coulomb branch of ${\cal N}=4$ SU(N) gauge theory which corresponds to a spherically symmetric shell of D3-branes. This point is of interest both because the spacetime region inside the shell is flat, and because this configuration gives a very simple example of the transition between D-branes in the perturbative string regime and the non-perturbative regime of black holes. We discuss how this geometry is described in the dual gauge theory, through its effect on the two-point functions and Wilson loops. In the calculation of the two-…
Computing the entanglement entropy in confining gauge theories is often accompanied by puzzles and ambiguities. In this work we show that compactifying the theory on a small circle $\mathbb S^1_L$ evades these difficulties. In particular, we study Yang-Mills theory on $\mathbb R^3\times \mathbb S^1_L$ with double-trace deformations or adjoint fermions and hold it at temperatures near the deconfinement transition. This theory is dual to a multi-component (electric-magnetic) Coulomb gas that can be mapped either to an XY-spin model with $\mathbb Z_p$-preserving perturbations or dual Sine-Gordon …
Electric-magnetic duality, the Newman-Janis shift, and the double copy all act by elementary operations on three-point amplitudes. At the same time, they generate a network of interesting classical solutions spanning from the Coulomb charge via the dyon to the Kerr-Taub-NUT spacetime. We identify the amplitudes corresponding to each of these solutions, working to all orders in spin, but to leading perturbative order. We confirm that the amplitudes double-copy when the solutions are related by the classical double copy. Along the way we show that the Kerr-Taub-NUT solution corresponds to a grav…
We introduce several families of $\mathcal{N}=(2,2)$ UV boundary conditions in 3d $\mathcal N=4$ gauge theories and study their IR images in sigma-models to the Higgs and Coulomb branches. In the presence of Omega deformations, a UV boundary condition defines a pair of modules for quantized algebras of chiral Higgs- and Coulomb-branch operators, respectively, whose structure we derive. In the case of abelian theories, we use the formalism of hyperplane arrangements to make our constructions very explicit, and construct a half-BPS interface that implements the action of 3d mirror symmetry on ga…
We consider N = 2 superconformal field theory with following properties: a) Coulomb branch operators have fractional scaling dimensions, b) there are exact marginal deformations . The weakly coupled gauge theory descriptions are found by decomposing 3d mirror into different components, and different decompositions correspond to different duality frames. The gauge theory is formed by gauging Argyres-Douglas matter, and we write down all duality frames for several classes with infinite sequence of theories.
In this article we explore the duality between the low energy effective theory of five-dimensional N=1 SU(N)^{M-1} and SU(M)^{N-1} linear quiver gauge theories compactified on S^1. The theories we study are the five-dimensional uplifts of four-dimensional superconformal linear quivers. We study this duality by comparing the Seiberg-Witten curves and the Nekrasov partition functions of the two dual theories. The Seiberg-Witten curves are obtained by minimizing the worldvolume of an M5-brane with nontrivial geometry. Nekrasov partition functions are computed using topological string theory. The …
In this paper we discuss $3d$ ${\cal N}=2$ supersymmetric gauge theories and their IR dualities when they are compactified on a circle of radius $r$, and when we take the $2d$ limit in which $r\to 0$. The $2d$ limit depends on how the mass parameters are scaled as $r\to 0$, and often vacua become infinitely distant in the $2d$ limit, leading to a direct sum of different $2d$ theories. For generic mass parameters, when we take the same limit on both sides of a duality, we obtain $2d$ dualities (between gauge theories and/or Landau-Ginzburg theories) that pass all the usual tests. However, when …
Based on gauge-gravity duality, by using holographic entanglement entropy, we have done a phenomenological study to probe confinement-deconfinement phase transition in the QCD-like gauge theory. Our outcomes are in perfect agreement with the expected results, qualitatively and quantitatively. We find out that the (holographic) entanglement entropy is a reliable order parameter for probing the phase transition.
The Higgs branch of minimally supersymmetric five dimensional SQCD theories increases in a significant way at the UV fixed point when the inverse gauge coupling is tuned to zero. It has been a long standing problem to figure out how, and to find an exact description of this Higgs branch. This paper solves this problem in an elegant way by proposing that the Coulomb branches of three dimensional ${\cal N}=4$ supersymmetric quiver gauge theories, named "Exceptional Sequences", provide the solution to the problem. Thus, once again, 3d ${\cal N}=4$ Coulomb branches prove to be useful tools in solv…
In this paper we discuss various $N=3$ SCFTs in 4 dimensions and in particular those which can be obtained as a discrete gauging of an $N=4$ SYM theories with non-simply laced groups. The main goal of the project was to compute the Coulomb branch superconformal index and Higgs branch Hilbert series for the $N=3$ SCFTs that are obtained from gauging a discrete subgroup of the global symmetry group of $N=4$ Super Yang-Mills theory. The discrete subgroup contains elements of both $SU(4)$ R-symmetry group and the S-duality group of $N=4$ SYM. This computation was done for the simply laced groups (…
We generalize S-duality to N=2 superconformal field theories (SCFTs) with Coulomb branch operators of non-integer scaling dimension. As simple examples, we find minimal generalizations of the S-dualities discovered in SU(2) gauge theory with four fundamental flavors by Seiberg and Witten and in SU(3) gauge theory with six fundamental flavors by Argyres and Seiberg. Our constructions start by weakly gauging diagonal SU(2) and SU(3) flavor symmetry subgroups of two copies of a particular rank-one Argyres-Douglas theory (along with sufficient numbers of hypermultiplets to guarantee conformality o…
We show that the two sets of self-dual Yang-Mills equations in 8-dimensions proposed in (E.Corrigan, C.Devchand, D.B.Fairlie and J.Nuyts, {\it Nuclear Physics} {\bf B214}, 452-464, (1983)) form respectively elliptic and overdetermined elliptic systems under the Coulomb gauge condition. In the overdetermined case, the Yang-Mills fields can depend at most on $N$ arbitrary constants, where $N$ is the dimension of the gauge group. We describe a subvariety ${\cal P}_8 $ of the skew-symmetric $8\times 8$ matrices by an eigenvalue criterion and we show that the solutions of the elliptic equations of …
We consider different types of fractional branes on a Z_2 orbifold of the conifold and analyze in detail the corresponding gauge/gravity duality. The gauge theory possesses a rich and varied dynamics, both in the UV and in the IR. We find the dual supergravity solution which contains both untwisted and twisted 3-form fluxes, related to what are known as deformation and N=2 fractional branes respectively. We analyze the resulting RG flow from the supergravity perspective, by developing an algorithm to easily extract it. We find hints of a generalization of the familiar cascade of Seiberg dualit…
