Supergravity Backgrounds for Four-Dimensional Maximally Supersymmetric Yang-Mills

TL;DR

This paper develops a framework for describing supersymmetric backgrounds in four-dimensional maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory by coupling it to conformal supergravity, enabling analysis of varying coupling scenarios like F-theory and Janus configurations.

Contribution

It extends the Festuccia-Seiberg method to sixteen supercharges by coupling to conformal supergravity, allowing for natural inclusion of spacetime varying couplings in the analysis.

Findings

Framework includes backgrounds with spacetime varying couplings.

Examples demonstrate the formalism's applicability to known configurations.

Coupling to conformal supergravity captures complexified gauge coupling variations.

Abstract

In this note, we describe supersymmetric backgrounds for the four-dimensional maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. As an extension of the method of Festuccia and Seiberg to sixteen supercharges in four dimensions, we utilize the coupling of the gauge theory to maximally extended conformal supergravity. Included among the fields of the conformal supergravity multiplet is the complexified coupling parameter of the gauge theory; therefore, backgrounds with spacetime varying coupling--such as appear in F-theory and Janus configurations--are naturally included in this formalism. We demonstrate this with a few examples from past literature.