6d strings from new chiral gauge theories

TL;DR

This paper develops new 2d gauge theory models to describe self-dual strings in a 6d superconformal field theory with minimal non-Higgsable gauge symmetry, matching known data and anomaly calculations.

Contribution

It introduces novel 2d gauge theories for self-dual strings in 6d theories and verifies their consistency through elliptic genus computations and anomaly matching.

Findings

Elliptic genera match partial topological string data.

Anomalies of gauge theories agree with inflow calculations.

Generalization to $(E_6,E_6)$ conformal matter.

Abstract

We study the 6d $\mathcal{N}=(1,0)$ superconformal field theory with smallest non-Higgsable gauge symmetry $SU(3)$. In particular, we propose new 2d gauge theory descriptions of its self-dual strings in the tensor branch. We use our gauge theories to compute the elliptic genera of the self-dual strings, which completely agree with the partial data known from topological strings. We further study the strings of the $(E_6,E_6)$ conformal matter by generalizing our 2d gauge theories. We also show that anomalies of all our gauge theories agree with the self-dual string anomalies computed by inflows from 6d.