M5-brane geometries, T-duality and fluxes

TL;DR

This paper explores a duality between M5-brane configurations in M-theory and type IIB flux backgrounds, revealing geometric insights and novel effects such as flux-induced brane recombination and decay channels.

Contribution

It establishes a duality relating M5-brane setups to IIB flux configurations, providing geometric interpretations and uncovering new effects like brane recombination and flux decay mechanisms.

Findings

Duality relates M5-branes to IIB flux backgrounds.

Recombination of M5-branes corresponds to dielectric effects in D3-branes.

Decay channels for non-supersymmetric fluxes are proposed.

Abstract

We describe a duality relation between configurations of M5-branes in M-theory and type IIB theory on Taub-NUT geometries with NSNS and RR 3-form field strength fluxes. The flux parameters are controlled by the angles between the M5-brane and the (T)duality directions. For one M5-brane, the duality leads to a family of supersymmetric flux configurations which interpolates between imaginary self-dual fluxes and fluxes similar to the Polchinski-Strassler kind. For multiple M5-branes, the IIB configurations are related to fluxes for twisted sector fields in orbifolds. The dual M5-brane picture also provides a geometric interpretation for several properties of flux configurations (like the supersymmetry conditions, their contribution to tadpoles, etc), and for many non-trivial effects in the IIB side. Among the latter, the dielectric effect for probe D3-branes is dual to the recombination of probe M5-branes with background ones; also, a picture of a decay channel for non-supersymmetric fluxes is suggested.