Recently we provided a microscopic derivation of the exact supergravity profile for the twisted scalar field emitted by systems of fractional D3-branes at a Z2 orbifold singularity. In this contribution we focus on a set-up supporting an N = 2 SYM th
eory with SU(2) gauge group and Nf=4. We take into account the tower of D-instanton corrections to the source terms for the twisted scalar and find that its profile can be expressed in terms of the chiral ring elements of the gauge theory. We show how the twisted scalar, which at the perturbative level represents the gravity counterpart of the gauge coupling, at the non-perturbative level is related to the effective gauge coupling in an interestingly modified way.
We give a direct microscopic derivation of the F-theory background that corresponds to four D7 branes of type I theory by taking into account the D-instanton contributions to the emission of the axio-dilaton field in the directions transverse to the
D7s. The couplings of the axio-dilaton to the D-instanton moduli modify its classical source terms which are shown to be proportional to the elements of the D7 brane chiral ring. Solving the bulk field equations with the non-perturbatively corrected sources yields the full F-theory background. This solution represents the gravitational dual of the four-dimensional theory living on a probe D3 brane of type I, namely of the N=2, Sp(1) SYM theory with Nf=4. Our results provide an explicit microscopic derivation of the non-perturbative gravitational dual of this theory. They also explain the recent observation that the exact coupling for this theory can be entirely reconstructed from its perturbative part plus the knowledge of the chiral ring on the D7 branes supporting its flavor degrees of freedom.
We discuss a string model where a conformal four-dimensional N=2 gauge theory receives corrections to its gauge kinetic functions from stringy instantons. These contributions are explicitly evaluated by exploiting the localization properties of the i
ntegral over the stringy instanton moduli space. The model we consider corresponds to a setup with D7/D3-branes in type I theory compactified on T4/Z2 x T2, and possesses a perturbatively computable heterotic dual. In the heteoric side the corrections to the quadratic gauge couplings are provided by a 1-loop threshold computation and, under the duality map, match precisely the first few stringy instanton effects in the type I setup. This agreement represents a very non-trivial test of our approach to the exotic instanton calculus.
We compute the partition function for the exotic instanton system corresponding to D-instantons on D7 branes in Type I theory. We exploit the BRST structure of the moduli action and its deformation by RR background to fully localize the integration.
The resulting prepotential describes non-perturbative corrections to the quartic couplings of the gauge field F living on the D7s. The results match perfectly those obtained in the dual heterotic theory from a protected 1-loop computation, thus providing a non-trivial test of the duality itself.
