Twisted Circle Compactifications of 6d SCFTs

TL;DR

This paper explores twisted circle compactifications of 6d SCFTs, computing Coulomb branch prepotentials, and associating these theories with Calabi-Yau threefolds to understand RG flows to 5d SCFTs, revealing new M-theory duals.

Contribution

It introduces a framework for analyzing twisted circle compactifications of 6d SCFTs and connects them to Calabi-Yau threefolds, providing new insights into 5d SCFTs and their duals.

Findings

Computed Coulomb branch prepotentials for 5d KK theories

Associated these theories with smooth genus one fibered Calabi-Yau threefolds

Proposed algebraic descriptions for exceptional KK theories without standard geometric models

Abstract

We study 6d superconformal field theories (SCFTs) compactified on a circle with arbitrary twists. The theories obtained after compactification, often referred to as 5d Kaluza-Klein (KK) theories, can be viewed as starting points for RG flows to 5d SCFTs. According to a conjecture, all 5d SCFTs can be obtained in this fashion. We compute the Coulomb branch prepotential for all 5d KK theories obtainable in this manner and associate to these theories a smooth local genus one fibered Calabi-Yau threefold in which is encoded information about all possible RG flows to 5d SCFTs. These Calabi-Yau threefolds provide hitherto unknown M-theory duals of F-theory configurations compactified on a circle with twists. For certain exceptional KK theories that do not admit a standard geometric description we propose an algebraic description that appears to retain the properties of the local Calabi-Yau threefolds necessary to determine RG flows to 5d SCFTs, along with other relevant physical data.