Michele Del Zotto
Universal features of BPS strings in six-dimensional SCFTs
Del Zotto, Michele; Lockhart, Guglielmo
Authors
Guglielmo Lockhart
Abstract
In theories with extended supersymmetry the protected observables of UV superconformal fixed points are found in a number of contexts to be encoded in the BPS solitons along an IR Coulomb-like phase. For six-dimensional SCFTs such a role is played by the BPS strings on the tensorial Coulomb branch. In this paper we develop a uniform description of the worldsheet theories of a BPS string for rank-one 6d SCFTs. These strings are the basic constituents of the BPS string spectrum of arbitrary rank six-dimensional models, which they generate by forming bound states. Motivated by geometric engineering in F-theory, we describe the worldsheet theories of the BPS strings in terms of topologically twisted 4d N=2 theories in the presence of 1/2-BPS 2d (0, 4) defects. As the superconformal point of a 6d theory with gauge group G is approached, the resulting worldsheet theory flows to an N=(0, 4) NLSM with target the moduli space of one G instanton, together with a nontrivial left moving bundle characterized by the matter content of the six-dimensional model. We compute the anomaly polynomial and central charges of the NLSM, and argue that the 6d flavor symmetry F is realized as a current algebra on the string, whose level we compute. We find evidence that for generic theories the G dependence is captured at the level of the elliptic genus by characters of an affine Kac-Moody algebra at negative level, which we interpret as a subsector of the chiral algebra of the BPS string worldsheet theory. We also find evidence for a spectral flow relating the R-R and NS-R elliptic genera. These properties of the string CFTs lead to constraints on their spectra, which in combination with modularity allow us to determine the elliptic genera of a vast number of string CFTs, leading also to novel results for 6d and 5d instanton partition functions.
Citation
Del Zotto, M., & Lockhart, G. (2018). Universal features of BPS strings in six-dimensional SCFTs. Journal of High Energy Physics, 2018(8), Article 173. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep08%282018%29173
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Aug 19, 2018 |
Online Publication Date | Aug 28, 2018 |
Publication Date | Aug 28, 2018 |
Deposit Date | Oct 22, 2018 |
Publicly Available Date | Oct 22, 2018 |
Journal | Journal of High Energy Physics |
Print ISSN | 1126-6708 |
Publisher | Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA) |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 2018 |
Issue | 8 |
Article Number | 173 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep08%282018%29173 |
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Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits any use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
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