Diagrammatic Expansion of Non-Perturbative Little String Free Energies

TL;DR

This paper extends the diagrammatic expansion of non-perturbative Little String Theory free energies, providing explicit formulas for small N and conjectures for general N, revealing connections to scalar Green's functions and modular graph functions.

Contribution

It introduces a non-perturbative diagrammatic expansion for Little String Theories, expressing coupling functions as combinations of scalar Green's functions and Eisenstein series for arbitrary N.

Findings

Coupling functions for N=2,3,4 are expressed as two-point functions of a free scalar on a torus.

Higher instanton order couplings involve decorated scalar Green's functions and Eisenstein series.

Evidence suggests a universal structure of these couplings for general N, linked to modular graph functions.

Abstract

In arXiv:1911.08172 we have studied the single-particle free energy of a class of Little String Theories of A-type, which are engineered by $N$ parallel M5-branes on a circle. To leading instanton order (from the perspective of the low energy $U(N)$ gauge theory) and partially also to higher order, a decomposition was observed, which resembles a Feynman diagrammatic expansion: external states are given by expansion coefficients of the $N=1$ BPS free energy and a quasi-Jacobi form that governs the BPS-counting of an M5-brane coupling to two M2-branes. The effective coupling functions were written as infinite series and similarities to modular graph functions were remarked. In the current work we continue and extend this study: Working with the full non-perturbative BPS free energy, we analyse in detail the cases $N=2,3$ and $4$. We argue that in these cases to leading instanton order all coupling functions can be written as a simple combination of two-point functions of a single free scalar field on the torus. We provide closed form expressions, which we conjecture to hold for generic $N$. To higher instanton order, we observe that a decomposition of the free energy in terms of higher point functions with the same external states is still possible but a priori not unique. We nevertheless provide evidence that tentative coupling functions are still combinations of scalar Greens functions, which are decorated with derivatives or multiplied with holomorphic Eisenstein series. We interpret these decorations as corrections of the leading order effective couplings and in particular link the latter to dihedral graph functions with bivalent vertices, which suggests an interpretation in terms of disconnected graphs.