Bootstrapping BPS spectra of 5d/6d field theories

TL;DR

This paper introduces a systematic method based on blowup equations to compute BPS spectra of 5d/6d supersymmetric theories, including exotic cases, aiding the understanding of dualities and new SCFTs.

Contribution

It generalizes the blowup equation approach for 5d/6d theories, enabling computation of BPS spectra for a wide class of theories including exotic and higher-rank cases.

Findings

Computed BPS spectra for all rank-1 and rank-2 5d KK theories from 6d SCFTs

Identified new rank-1 and rank-2 5d SCFTs with frozen singularities

Provided evidence for dualities and existence of exotic 5d theories

Abstract

We propose a systematic approach to computing the BPS spectra of any 5d/6d supersymmetric quantum field theory in Coulomb phases, which admits either gauge theory descriptions or geometric descriptions, based on the Nakajima-Yoshioka's blowup equations. We provide a significant generalization of the blowup equation approach in terms of both properly quantized magnetic fluxes on the blowup $\hat{\mathbb{C}}^2$ and the effective prepotential for 5d/6d field theories on the Omega background which is uniquely determined by the Chern-Simons couplings on their Coulomb branches. We employ our method to compute BPS spectra of all rank-1 and rank-2 5d Kaluza-Klein (KK) theories descending from 6d $\mathcal{N}=(1,0)$ superconformal field theories (SCFTs) compactified on a circle with/without twist. We also discuss various 5d SCFTs and KK theories of higher ranks, which include a few exotic cases such as new rank-1 and rank-2 5d SCFTs engineered with frozen singularity as well as the 5d $SU(3)_8$ gauge theory currently having neither a brane web nor a smooth shrinkable geometric description. The results serve as non-trivial checks for a large class of non-trivial dualities among 5d theories and also as independent evidences for the existence of certain exotic theories.