Spatially modulated and supersymmetric mass deformations of $\mathcal{N}=4$ SYM

TL;DR

This paper explores spatially modulated mass deformations of $ ext{N}=4$ SYM that preserve some supersymmetry, constructing holographic Janus solutions and RG interfaces, including new supergravity backgrounds.

Contribution

It introduces new supersymmetric, spatially modulated mass deformations of $ ext{N}=4$ SYM$ and constructs corresponding holographic Janus and RG interface solutions.

Findings

Constructed Janus solutions with same coupling on both sides of the interface.

Found RG interface solutions connecting $ ext{N}=4$ SYM and Leigh-Strassler SCFT.

Discovered a new supersymmetric $AdS_4\times S^1\times S^5$ solution.

Abstract

We study mass deformations of $\mathcal{N}=4$, $d=4$ SYM theory that are spatially modulated in one spatial dimension and preserve some residual supersymmetry. We focus on generalisations of $\mathcal{N}=1^*$ theories and show that it is also possible, for suitably chosen supersymmetric masses, to preserve $d=3$ conformal symmetry associated with a co-dimension one interface. Holographic solutions can be constructed using $D=5$ theories of gravity that arise from consistent truncations of $SO(6)$ gauged supergravity and hence type IIB supergravity. For the mass deformations that preserve $d=3$ superconformal symmetry we construct a rich set of Janus solutions of $\mathcal{N}=4$ SYM theory which have the same coupling constant on either side of the interface. Limiting classes of these solutions give rise to RG interface solutions with $\mathcal{N}=4$ SYM on one side of the interface and the Leigh-Strassler (LS) SCFT on the other, and also to a Janus solution for the LS theory. Another limiting solution is a new supersymmetric $AdS_4\times S^1\times S^5$ solution of type IIB supergravity.