Structure of Anomalies of 4d SCFTs from M5-branes, and Anomaly Inflow

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the anomaly structure of 4d SCFTs derived from M5-branes on punctured Riemann surfaces, highlighting bulk and local contributions and using anomaly inflow in M-theory.

Contribution

It provides a detailed description of the anomaly structure for N=2 and N=1 theories from M5-branes, including the role of punctures and anomaly inflow.

Findings

Bulk anomaly contribution depends on the Euler characteristic.

Local puncture data contribute independently to anomalies.

Anomaly inflow in M-theory explains the anomaly structure.

Abstract

We study the 't Hooft anomalies of four-dimensional superconformal field theories that arise from M5-branes wrapped on a punctured Riemann surface. In general there are two independent contributions to the anomalies. There is a bulk term obtained by integrating the anomaly polynomial of the world-volume theory on the M5-branes over the Riemann surface; this contribution knows about the punctures only through its dependence on the Euler characteristic of the surface. The second set of contributions comes from local data at the punctures; these terms are independent from the bulk data of the surface. Using anomaly inflow in M-theory, we describe the general structure of the anomalies for cases when the four-dimensional theories preserve N=2 supersymmetry. We additionally discuss the anomalies corresponding to (p,q) punctures in N=1 theories.