Branes at Orbifolds versus Hanany Witten in Six Dimensions

TL;DR

This paper bridges two approaches to constructing six-dimensional theories involving branes, revealing new dualities and constructing novel theories through string theory configurations.

Contribution

It demonstrates the equivalence of brane setups at ALE spaces and Hanany Witten configurations, uncovering new T-duality relations and constructing new 6d theories with orientifold planes.

Findings

Established T-duality relations between brane configurations.

Constructed new 6d theories from IIB orientifolds.

Uncovered equivalences between different brane setups.

Abstract

We reconstruct non-trivial 6d theories obtained by Blum and Intriligator by considering IIB or SO(32) 5 branes at ALE spaces in the language of Hanany Witten setups. Using ST duality we make the equivalence of the two approaches manifest, thereby uncovering several new T-duality relations between the group theoretic data describing the embedding of the instantonic 5 brane in the ALE and brane positions in the Hanany Witten language. We construct several new 6d theories, which can be understood as arising on 5 branes in IIB orientifolds with oppositely charged orientifold planes recently introduced by Witten.