Dualities in 4D Theories with Product Gauge Groups from Brane Configurations

We study brane configurations which correspond to N=1 field theories in four dimensions. By inverting the order of the NS 5-branes and D6-branes, a check on dualities in four dimensional theories can be made. We consider a brane configuration which yields electric/magnetic duality for gauge theories with $SO(N_{c1})\times Sp(N_{c2})$ product gauge group. We also discuss the possible extension to any alternating product of SO and Sp groups. The new features arising from the intersection of the NS 5-branes on the orientifold play a crucial role in our construction.Comment: 13 pages, Latex, version to appear in Physics Letters

Trivialized Content, Elevated From: Aesthetics of Secrecy in Turkish Politics in the 2000s

This essay will first provide a brief history of the Islamist party\u27s coming to power by means of its effective use of a populist imagery. The paper will then focus on the emergence of a new regime of secrecy in Turkish politics by looking at two high-profile legal cases, Ergenekon and the “Cosmic Room,” in which one can observe the blueprints of a struggle between different factions for taking over the state. During the investigations, secret documents about the wrongdoings of the secular establishment were leaked to and widely covered by the media. Sober debates on the contents of such documents were dwarfed by the tendency to scandalize, stigmatize, and foster fascination for the purported clandestine organizations within the state in line with conspiracist aesthetics. In later sections of the paper, the elements of entertainment and seriousness of this conspiracist aesthetics are analyzed

SQCD Vacua and Geometrical Engineering

We consider the geometrical engineering constructions for the N = 1 SQCD vacua recently proposed by Giveon and Kutasov. After one T-duality, the geometries with wrapped D5 branes become N = 1 brane configurations with NS branes and D4 branes. The field theories encoded by the geometries contain extra massive adjoint fields for the flavor group. After performing a flop, the geometries contain branes, antibranes and branes wrapped on non-holomorphic cycles. The various tachyon condensations between pairs of wrapped D5 branes and anti D5 branes together with deformations of the cycles give rise to a variety of supersymmetric and metastable non-supersymmetric vacua.Comment: 21 Pages, Latex, 8 Figure

Flows between Dualities for 3d Chern-Simons Theories

We study Seiberg-like dualities for 3d N=2 theories with flavors in fundamental and adjoint representations. The recent results of Intriligator and Seiberg provide a derivation of an Aharony duality from a Giveon-Kutasov duality. We extend their result to the case of more general theories involving various masses for fundamental quarks and adjoint fields. By fine tuning the vev of a scalar field and using various identifications between gauge groups and their singlet duals, we derive several examples of Aharony dualities. For theories with an adjoint field, we discuss the connection between the Aharony dualities proposed by Kim and Park for theories with multiple Coulomb branches and Giveon-Kutasov-Niarchos dualities.Comment: 21 page

Renormalization Group Flows on D3 branes at an Orbifolded Conifold

We consider D3-branes at an orbifolded conifold whose horizon ${X_5}$ resolves into a smooth Einstein manifold which joins several copies of ${\bf T}^{1,1}$. We describe in details the resolution of the singular horizon ${X_5}$ and describe different types of two-cycles appearing in the resolution. For a large number of D3 branes, the AdS/CFT conjecture becomes a duality between type IIB string theory on $AdS_5 \times {X_5}$ and the ${\cal N} = 1$ field theory living on the D3 branes. We study the fractional branes as small perturbations of the string background and we reproduce the logarithmic flow of field theory couplings by studying fluxes of NS-NS and R-R two forms through different 2-cycles of the resolved horizon.Comment: Latex 22 pages with 3 eps file

Three Dimensional SCFT from M2 Branes at Conifold Singularities

Recently it was conjectured that parallel branes at conical singularities are related to string/M theory on $AdS \times X$ where $X$ is an Einstein manifold. In this paper we consider coincident M2 branes near a conifold singularity when M theory is compactified on $AdS_4 \times Q^{1,1,1}$ where $Q^{1,1,1} = (SU(2) \times SU(2) \times SU(2))/(U(1) \times U(1))$ is a seven dimensional Sasaki-Einstein manifold. We argue that M theory on $AdS_4 \times Q^{1,1,1}$ can be described in terms of a three dimensional superconformal field theory.We use the fact that the three dimensional self-mirror duality is preserved by exact marginal operators, as observed by Strassler.Comment: 16 pages, Latex, minor extensions, important references added, acknowledgements extende

Branes at Orbifolded Conifold Singularities and Supersymmetric Gauge Field Theories

We consider D3 branes at orbifolded conifold singularities which are not quotient singularities. We use toric geometry and gauged linear sigma model to study the moduli space of the gauge theories on the D3 branes. We find that topologically distinct phases are related by a flop transition. It is also shown that an orbifold singularity can occur in some phases if we give expectation values to some of the chiral fields.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, late