No Arabic abstract
We discuss in detail the problem of counting BPS gauge invariant operators in the chiral ring of quiver gauge theories living on D-branes probing generic toric CY singularities. The computation of generating functions that include counting of baryonic operators is based on a relation between the baryonic charges in field theory and the Kaehler moduli of the CY singularities. A study of the interplay between gauge theory and geometry shows that given geometrical sectors appear more than once in the field theory, leading to a notion of multiplicities. We explain in detail how to decompose the generating function for one D-brane into different sectors and how to compute their relevant multiplicities by introducing geometric and anomalous baryonic charges. The Plethystic Exponential remains a major tool for passing from one D-brane to arbitrary number of D-branes. Explicit formulae are given for few examples, including C^3/Z_3, F_0, and dP_1.
We discuss a general procedure to obtain 1/2 BPS partition functions for generic N=1 quiver gauge theories. These functions count the gauge invariant operators (bosonic and fermionic), charged under all the global symmetries (mesonic and baryonic), in the chiral ring of a given quiver gauge theory. In particular we discuss the inclusion of the spinor degrees of freedom in the partition functions.
Reflexive polygons have been extensively studied in a variety of contexts in mathematics and physics. We generalize this programme by looking at the 45 different lattice polygons with two interior points up to SL(2,$mathbb{Z}$) equivalence. Each corresponds to some affine toric 3-fold as a cone over a Sasaki-Einstein 5-fold. We study the quiver gauge theories of D3-branes probing these cones, which coincide with the mesonic moduli space. The minimum of the volume function of the Sasaki-Einstein base manifold plays an important role in computing the R-charges. We analyze these minimized volumes with respect to the topological quantities of the compact surfaces constructed from the polygons. Unlike reflexive polytopes, one can have two fans from the two interior points, and hence give rise to two smooth varieties after complete resolutions, leading to an interesting pair of closely related geometries and gauge theories.
We study half-BPS surface operators in supersymmetric gauge theories in four and five dimensions following two different approaches. In the first approach we analyze the chiral ring equations for certain quiver theories in two and three dimensions, coupled respectively to four- and five-dimensional gauge theories. The chiral ring equations, which arise from extremizing a twisted chiral superpotential, are solved as power series in the infrared scales of the quiver theories. In the second approach we use equivariant localization and obtain the twisted chiral superpotential as a function of the Coulomb moduli of the four- and five-dimensional gauge theories, and find a perfect match with the results obtained from the chiral ring equations. In the five-dimensional case this match is achieved after solving a number of subtleties in the localization formulas which amounts to choosing a particular residue prescription in the integrals that yield the Nekrasov-like partition functions for ramified instantons. We also comment on the necessity of including Chern-Simons terms in order to match the superpotentials obtained from dual quiver descriptions of a given surface operator.
We study low-energy dynamics of $[SU(N)]^K$ chiral quiver gauge theories in connection with $mathcal{N}=1$ super Yang-Mills (SYM) theory, and quantum chromodynamics with bi-fundamental fermions (QCD(BF)). These theories can be obtained by $mathbb{Z}_K$ orbifold projections of $mathcal{N}=1$ $SU(NK)$ SYM theory, but the perturbative planar equivalence does not extend nonperturbatively for $Kge 3$. In order to study low-energy behaviors, we analyze these systems using t~Hooft anomaly matching and reliable semiclassics on $mathbb{R}^3times S^1$. Thanks to t~Hooft anomaly that involves $1$-form center symmetry and discrete chiral symmetry, we predict that chiral symmetry must be spontaneously broken in the confinement phase, and there exist $N$ vacua. Theories with even $K$ possess a physical $theta$ angle despite the presence of massless fermions, and we further predict the $N$-branch structure associated with it; the number of vacua is enhanced to $2N$ at $theta=pi$ due to spontaneous $CP$ breaking. Both of these predictions are explicitly confirmed by reliable semiclassics on $mathbb{R}^3times S^1$ with the double-trace deformation. Symmetry and anomaly of odd-$K$ theories are the same as those of the ${cal N}=1$ SYM, and the ones of even-$K$ theories are same as those of QCD(BF). We unveil why there exists universality between vector-like and chiral quiver theories, and conjecture that their ground states can be continuously deformed without quantum phase transitions. We briefly discuss anomaly inflow on the domain walls connecting the vacua of the theory and possible anomaly matching scenarios.
In this paper we consider quiver gauge theories with fractional branes whose infrared dynamics removes the classical supersymmetric vacua (DSB branes). We show that addition of flavors to these theories (via additional non-compact branes) leads to local meta-stable supersymmetry breaking minima, closely related to those of SQCD with massive flavors. We simplify the study of the one-loop lifting of the accidental classical flat directions by direct computation of the pseudomoduli masses via Feynman diagrams. This new approach allows to obtain analytic results for all these theories. This work extends the results for the $dP_1$ theory in hep-th/0607218. The new approach allows to generalize the computation to general examples of DSB branes, and for arbitrary values of the superpotential couplings.