Gauge/gravity duality and the interplay of various fractional branes

TL;DR

This paper explores the gauge/gravity duality involving various fractional branes on a Z_2 orbifold of the conifold, revealing complex RG flows, duality cascades, and IR behaviors like confinement, Coulomb phase, or runaway, with implications for resolving geometric singularities.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of supergravity solutions with multiple fractional branes, proposing a generalized cascade mechanism and examining IR dynamics and singularity resolutions.

Findings

Identification of supergravity solutions with mixed fluxes

Hints of a generalized Seiberg duality cascade

Analysis of IR behaviors including confinement and runaway

Abstract

We consider different types of fractional branes on a Z_2 orbifold of the conifold and analyze in detail the corresponding gauge/gravity duality. The gauge theory possesses a rich and varied dynamics, both in the UV and in the IR. We find the dual supergravity solution which contains both untwisted and twisted 3-form fluxes, related to what are known as deformation and N=2 fractional branes respectively. We analyze the resulting RG flow from the supergravity perspective, by developing an algorithm to easily extract it. We find hints of a generalization of the familiar cascade of Seiberg dualities due to a non-trivial interplay between the different types of fractional branes. We finally consider the IR behavior in several limits, where the dominant effective dynamics is either confining, in a Coulomb phase or runaway, and discuss the resolution of singularities in the dual geometric background.