Topological Twist in Four Dimensions, R-Duality and Hyperinstantons

TL;DR

This paper explores a new topological twist in four-dimensional N=2 theories, revealing an R-duality symmetry in minimal supergravity, leading to novel topological gauge theories and hyperinstantons with potential geometric implications.

Contribution

It introduces R-duality in minimal N=2 supergravity, enabling a new topological twist that couples gravity to Yang-Mills theory and develops hyperinstantons in quaternionic sigma-models.

Findings

Discovery of R-duality symmetry in minimal supergravity

Construction of topological gravity coupled to Yang-Mills theory

Introduction of hyperinstantons as triholomorphic mappings

Abstract

In this paper we continue the programme of topologically twisting N=2 theories in D=4, focusing on the coupling of vector multiplets to N=2 supergravity. We show that in the minimal case, namely when the special geometry prepotential F(X) is a quadratic polynomial, the theory has a so far unknown on shell U(1) symmetry, that we name R-duality. R-duality is a generalization of the chiral-dual on shell symmetry of N=2 pure supergravity and of the R-symmetry of N=2 super Yang-Mills theory. Thanks to this, the theory can be topologically twisted and topologically shifted, precisely as pure N=2 supergravity, to yield a natural coupling of topological gravity to topological Yang-Mills theory. The gauge-fixing condition that emerges from the twisting is the self- duality condition on the gauge field-stength and on the spin connection. Hence our theory reduces to intersection theory in the moduli-space of gauge instantons living in gravitational instanton backgrounds. We remark that the topological Yang-Mills theory we obtain by taking the flat space limit of our gravity coupled Lagrangian is different from the Donaldson theory constructed by Witten. Whether this difference is substantial and what its geometrical implications may be is yet to be seen. We also discuss the topological twist of the hypermultiplets leading to topological quaternionic $\sigma$-models. The instantons of these models, named by us hyperinstantons, correspond to a notion of triholomorphic mappings discussed in the paper.