Branes And Supergroups

TL;DR

This paper explores the relationship between brane configurations and supergroup Chern-Simons theories, revealing dualities and connections to Khovanov homology, extending previous work on D3-branes and fivebranes.

Contribution

It introduces a new duality framework linking supergroup Chern-Simons theories with brane setups and extends the understanding of their dualities and topological invariants.

Findings

Supergroup Chern-Simons theories are realized via brane configurations.

S-duality relates these theories to magnetic dual descriptions.

Connections to Khovanov homology for supergroups are established.

Abstract

Extending previous work that involved D3-branes ending on a fivebrane with $\theta_{\mathrm{YM}}\not=0$, we consider a similar two-sided problem. This construction, in case the fivebrane is of NS type, is associated to the three-dimensional Chern-Simons theory of a supergroup U$(m|n)$ or OSp$(m|2n)$ rather than an ordinary Lie group as in the one-sided case. By $S$-duality, we deduce a dual magnetic description of the supergroup Chern-Simons theory; a slightly different duality, in the orthosymplectic case, leads to a strong-weak coupling duality between certain supergroup Chern-Simons theories on $\mathbb{R}^3$; and a further $T$-duality leads to a version of Khovanov homology for supergroups. Some cases of these statements are known in the literature. We analyze how these dualities act on line and surface operators.