Higher dimensional conformal field theories in the Coulomb branch

TL;DR

This paper investigates flows from N=4 SYM to non-conformal theories using AdS/CFT, revealing connections to six and five-dimensional conformal field theories with specific symmetries.

Contribution

It demonstrates how certain Coulomb branch flows correspond to higher-dimensional conformal theories via dual geometries sourced by D3 branes.

Findings

Flow to 6D (2,0) theory in Coulomb branch

Flow to 5D theory with E1 symmetry

Dual geometries characterized by Wigner's semicircle distribution

Abstract

We use the AdS/CFT correspondence to study flows of N=4 SYM to non-conformal theories. The dual geometries can be seen as sourced by a Wigner's semicircle distribution of D3 branes. We consider two cases, the first case corresponds to a point in the Coulomb branch and the theory flows to a six dimensional conformal field theory. In the second case a mass is introduced for a hypermultiplet and the theory flows to a five dimensional conformal field theory. We argue from the gravity and the field theory side that the low energy theories correspond to the (2,0) theory in six dimensions and to a theory with exceptional global symmetry $E_1$ in five dimensions.