N=2 S-duality revisited

作者：Buican Matthew^*; Laczko Zoltan; Nishinaka Takahiro

来源：The Journal of High Energy Physics, 2017, 2017(9): 87.

DOI：10.1007/JHEP09(2017)087

• Conformal Field Theory
• Supersymmetry and Duality

Using the chiral algebra bootstrap, we revisit the simplest Argyres-Douglas (AD) generalization of Argyres-Seiberg S-duality. We argue that the exotic AD superconformal field theory (SCFT), T-3,T-3/2, emerging in this duality splits into a free piece and an interacting piece, T-X, even though this factorization seems invisible in the Seiberg-Witten (SW) curve derived from the corresponding M5-brane construction. Without a Lagrangian, an associated topological field theory, a BPS spectrum, or even an SW curve, we nonetheless obtain exact information about T-X by bootstrapping its chiral algebra,chi(T-X), and finding the corresponding vacuum character in terms of Affine Kac-Moody characters. By a standard 4D/2D correspondence, this result gives us the Schur index for T-X and, by studying this quantity in the limit of small S-1, we make contact with a proposed S-1 reduction. Along the way, we discuss various properties of T-X: as an N = 1 theory, it has flavor symmetry SU(3) x SU(2) x U(1), the central charge of chi(T-X) matches the central charge of the bc ghosts in bosonic string theory, and its global SU(2) symmetry has a Witten anomaly. This anomaly does not prevent us from building conformal manifolds out of arbitrary numbers of T-X theories (giving us a surprisingly close AD relative of Gaiotto's T-N theories), but it does lead to some open questions in the context of the chiral algebra/4D N = 2 SCFT correspondence.

• 出版日期2017-9-19