Webs of five-branes and N=2 superconformal field theories

TL;DR

This paper presents a diagrammatic approach to realize and analyze four-dimensional N=2 superconformal field theories using webs of five-branes and seven-branes, including theories with exceptional flavor symmetries.

Contribution

It introduces a new diagrammatic method to count Coulomb and Higgs branch dimensions and analyzes strongly-coupled theories with E6, E7, E8 symmetries within this framework.

Findings

Successfully realizes N=2 SCFTs with E6, E7, E8 flavor symmetry.

Provides a uniform analysis of these theories at strong coupling.

Enables counting of Coulomb and Higgs branch dimensions using a generalized s-rule.

Abstract

We describe configurations of 5-branes and 7-branes which realize, when compactified on a circle, new isolated four-dimensional N=2 superconformal field theories recently constructed by Gaiotto. Our diagrammatic method allows to easily count the dimensions of Coulomb and Higgs branches, with the help of a generalized s-rule. We furthermore show that superconformal field theories with E6, E7, E8 flavor symmetry can be analyzed in a uniform manner in this framework; in particular we realize these theories at infinitely strongly-coupled limits of quiver theories with SU gauge groups.