Deformed supersymmetric gauge theories from the fluxtrap background

The fluxtrap background of string theory provides a transparent and algorithmic way of constructing supersymmetric gauge theories with both mass and Omega-type deformations in various dimensions. In this article, we review a number of deformed supersymmetric gauge theories in two and four dimensions which can be obtained via the fluxtrap background from string or M-theory. Such theories, the most well-known being Omega-deformed super Yang-Mills theory in four dimensions, have met with a lot of interest in the recent literature. The string theory treatment offers many new avenues of analysis and applications, such as for example the study of the gravity duals for deformed N=4 gauge theories

Monopole Quivers and new 3D N=2 dualities

We present a new family of dualities for three-dimensional gauge theories, motivated by the brane realization of the reduction of four-dimensional dualities on a circle. This family can be understood as a generalization of Aharony duality to quiver gauge theories whose nodes interact via monopole terms in the superpotential. We refer to this family of theories as monopole quivers. We corroborate the new dualities by checking the equivalence of the three-sphere partition functions, obtained from the standard circle reduction of the four-dimensional superconformal index. As a special case, we recover some dualities recently discussed in the literature.}Comment: 27 pages, 4 figure

BPS States in the Duality Web of the Omega deformation

In this note, we study different limits of an Omega-deformed (2,0) six-dimensional gauge theory realized in a M-theory fluxtrap background. Via a chain of dualities, we connect the Omega-deformed SYM to a new four-dimensional gauge theory which we refer to as the reciprocal gauge theory. This theory has several properties in common with Liouville field theory, such as its gauge coupling b^2 =\epsilon_2 / \epsilon_1, and its behavior under S-duality. Finally, we realize the BPS states on the SYM side of the AGT correspondence and follow them along the chain of dualities. In the fluxtrap frame, we are dealing with two distinct types of states localized in different radial positions, while in the reciprocal frame, we find single states carrying both charges localized in one place which appear to be perturbatively stable. Our microscopic picture of the small-b limit exhibits semiclassically BPS bound states, which are not visible at the level of the partition function.Comment: 20 pages, 2 figures. Minor corrections, published in JHE

Matrix models at large charge

We show that the large-charge formalism can be successfully applied to models that go beyond the vector models discussed so far in the literature. We study the explicit example of a conformal $SU(3)$ matrix model in 2+1 space-time dimensions at fixed charge and calculate the anomalous dimension and fusion coefficients at leading order in the $U(1)$ charge.Comment: 31 pages, 1 figur

Line operators from M-branes on compact Riemann surfaces

In this paper, we determine the charge lattice of mutually local Wilson and 't Hooft line operators for class S theories living on M5-branes wrapped on compact Riemann surfaces. The main ingredients of our analysis are the fundamental group of the N-cover of the Riemann surface, and a quantum constraint on the six-dimensional theory. This latter plays a central role in excluding some of the possible lattices and imposing consistency conditions on the charges. This construction gives a geometric explanation for the mutual locality among the lines, fixing their charge lattice and the structure of the four-dimensional gauge group.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figure

A safe CFT at large charge

We apply the large-charge limit to the first known example of a four-dimensional gauge-Yukawa theory featuring an ultraviolet interacting fixed point in all couplings. We determine the energy of the ground state in presence of large fixed global charges and deduce the global symmetry breaking pattern. We show that the fermions decouple at low energy leaving behind a confining Yang-Mills theory and a characteristic spectrum of type I (relativistic) and type II (non-relativistic) Goldstone bosons. Armed with the knowledge acquired above we finally arrive at establishing the conformal dimensions of the theory as a triple expansion in the large-charge, the number of flavors and the controllably small inverse gauge coupling constant at the UV fixed point. Our results unveil a number of noteworthy properties of the low-energy spectrum, vacuum energy and conformal properties of the theory. They also allow us to derive a new consistency condition for the relative sizes of the couplings at the fixed point.Comment: 18 pages, published version, some typos correcte

The large-charge expansion for Schr\"odinger systems

In this note, we perform the large-charge expansion for non-relativistic systems with a global $U(1)$ symmetry in $3+1$ and $2+1$ space-time dimensions, motivated by applications to the unitary Fermi gas and anyons. These systems do not have full conformal invariance, but are invariant under the Schr\"odinger group. Also here, the low-energy physics is encoded by a Goldstone boson which is due to the breaking of the global symmetry when fixing the charge. We find that in $2+1$ dimensions and higher, there is a large-charge expansion in which quantum corrections are suppressed with respect to the next-to-leading order terms in the Lagrangian. We give the next-to-leading-order expressions for the ground state energy and the speed of sound.Comment: 15 pages. References added. JHEP versio

Omega-Deformed Seiberg-Witten Effective Action from the M5-brane

We obtain the leading order corrections to the effective action of an M5-brane wrapping a Riemann surface in the eleven-dimensional supergravity Omega-background. The result can be identified with the first order epsilon-deformation of the Seiberg-Witten effective action of pure SU(2) gauge theory. We also comment on the second order corrections and the generalization to arbitrary gauge group and matter content.Comment: Published in Phys.Lett.

String theory and the 4D/3D reduction of Seiberg duality. A Review

We review the reduction of four-dimensional N=1 Seiberg duality to three dimensions focusing on the D brane engineering approach. We start with an overview of four-dimensional Seiberg duality for theories with various types of gauge groups and matter content both from a field-theoretic and a brane engineering point of view. Then we describe two families of N=2 three-dimensional dualities, namely Giveon-Kutasov-like and Aharony-like dualities. The last part of our discussion is devoted to the 4D/3D reduction of the dualities studied above. We discuss both the analysis at finite radius, crucial for preserving the duality in the dimensional reduction, and the zero-size limit that must be supported by a real mass flow and a Higgsing, which can differ case by case. We show that this mechanism is reproduced in the brane description by T-duality, supplying a unified picture for all the different cases. As a bonus we show that this analysis provides a brane description for Aharony-like dualities.Comment: Section added on localization. To be published in Physics Report