Anomaly polynomial of general 6d SCFTs

TL;DR

This paper introduces a field-theoretic method to determine anomaly polynomials of 6d SCFTs, applicable to all known theories, and verifies results with M-theory anomaly inflow calculations.

Contribution

The authors develop a nearly purely field-theoretic approach to compute anomaly polynomials for general 6d SCFTs, including those on M5 branes on ALE singularities.

Findings

Method successfully applied to various 6d SCFTs

Reproduces the N^3 behavior in M5 brane theories

Results agree with M-theoretic anomaly inflow calculations

Abstract

We describe a method to determine the anomaly polynomials of general 6d $\mathcal{N}=(2,0)$ and $\mathcal{N}=(1,0)$ SCFTs, in terms of the anomaly matching on their tensor branches. This method is almost purely field theoretical, and can be applied to all known 6d SCFTs. We demonstrate our method in many concrete examples, including $\mathcal{N}=(2,0)$ theories of arbitrary type and the theories on M5 branes on ALE singularities, reproducing the $N^3$ behavior. We check the results against the anomaly polynomials computed M-theoretically via the anomaly inflow.