Branes for Higgs phases and exact conformal field theories

TL;DR

This paper explores supergravity solutions related to Higgs phases in supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories, revealing connections to exact conformal field theories, U-dualities, and various brane configurations, with implications for understanding black holes and solitons.

Contribution

It introduces a new class of multicenter supergravity solutions linked to Higgs phases and exact CFTs, and analyzes their dualities and supersymmetric properties.

Findings

Identification of generalized wormhole solutions as exact CFTs.

U-duality maps these backgrounds to purely gravitational solutions.

Insights into the relation between supergravity solutions and 2D solitons.

Abstract

We consider multicenter supergravity solutions corresponding to Higgs phases of supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories with Z_N symmetric vacua. In certain energy regimes, we find a description in terms of a generalized wormhole solution that corresponds to the SL(2,R)/U(1) \times SU(2)/U(1) exact conformal field theory. We show that U-dualities map these backgrounds to purely gravitational ones and comment on the relation to the black holes arising from intersecting D1 and D5 branes. We also discuss supersymmetric properties of the various solutions and the relation to 2-dim solitons, on flat space, of the reduced axion-dilaton-gravity equations. Finally, we address the problem of understanding other supergravity solutions from the multicenter ones. As prototype examples we use rotating D3 branes and NS5 and D5 branes associated to non-Abelian duals of 4-dim hyper-Kahler metrics with SO(3) isometry.