Marginal Deformations from Branes

TL;DR

This paper explores brane configurations in string theory to realize and analyze four-dimensional N=1 supersymmetric gauge theories with quartic superpotentials, focusing on their conformal fixed points and anomaly properties.

Contribution

It provides new brane descriptions of a broad class of marginal N=1 theories derived from finite N=2 models, including anomaly calculations and distinctions between elliptic and non-elliptic cases.

Findings

Weyl and Euler anomalies are equal in elliptic models.

Anomalies differ in non-elliptic theories.

Enumerates finite N=2 theories leading to marginal N=1 theories.

Abstract

We study brane configurations for four dimensional N=1 supersymmetric gauge theories with quartic superpotentials which flow in the infrared to manifolds of interacting superconformal fixed points. We enumerate finite N=2 theories, from which a large class of marginal N=1 theories descend. We give the brane descriptions of these theories in Type IIA and Type IIB string theory. The Type IIB descriptions are in terms of D3 branes in orientifold and generalized conifold backgrounds. We calculate the Weyl and Euler anomalies in these theories, and find that they are equal in elliptic models and unequal in a large class of finite N=2 and marginal N=1 non-elliptic theories.