A tale of two cascades: Higgsing and Seiberg-duality cascades from type IIB string theory

TL;DR

This paper constructs explicit type IIB supergravity solutions dual to N=1 supersymmetric field theories that exhibit both Seiberg duality cascades in the UV and Higgsing cascades at intermediate scales, culminating in confinement.

Contribution

It provides a new class of solutions demonstrating the coexistence of Seiberg duality and Higgsing cascades in holographic duals of supersymmetric gauge theories.

Findings

Solutions exhibit UV Seiberg duality cascade similar to Klebanov-Strassler.

Intermediate Higgsing cascade reduces gauge group rank.

IR behavior shows confinement with a smooth gravity end.

Abstract

We construct explicitly new solutions of type IIB supergravity with brane sources, the duals of which are N = 1 supersymmetric field theories exhibiting two very interesting phenomena. The far UV dynamics is controlled by a cascade of Seiberg dualities analogous to the Klebanov- Strassler backgrounds. At intermediate scales a cascade of Higgsing appears, in the sense that the gauge group undergoes a sequence of spontaneous symmetry breaking steps which reduces its rank. Deep in the IR, the theory confines, and the gravity background has a non-singular end of space. We explain in detail how to generate such solutions, discuss some of the Physics associated with them and briefly comment on the possible applications.