New Vacua of Gauged N=8 Supergravity

TL;DR

This paper identifies new Anti-de Sitter vacua in gauged N=8 supergravity, revealing stable and supersymmetric solutions that correspond to novel conformal phases and fixed points in dual gauge theories.

Contribution

It finds all critical points in a specific scalar sector of gauged N=8 supergravity, including stable, supersymmetric vacua, and links them to new conformal phases in Yang--Mills theory.

Findings

Discovery of new AdS vacua with SU(2) symmetry

Identification of a stable N=2 supersymmetric critical point

Relation of solutions to near-horizon geometries of 3-branes

Abstract

We analyze a particular SU(2) invariant sector of the scalar manifold of gauged N=8 supergravity in five dimensions, and find all the critical points of the potential within this sector. The critical points give rise to Anti-de Sitter vacua, and preserve at least an SU(2) gauge symmetry. Consistent truncation implies that these solutions correspond to Anti-de Sitter compactifications of IIB supergravity, and hence to possible near-horizon geometries of 3-branes. Thus we find new conformal phases of softly broken N=4 Yang--Mills theory. One of the critical points preserves N=2 supersymmetry in the bulk and is therefore completely stable, and corresponds to an N=1 superconformal fixed point of the Yang--Mills theory. The corresponding renormalization group flow from the N=4 point has c_{IR}/c_{UV} = 27/32. We also discuss the ten-dimensional geometries corresponding to these critical points.