Heterotic Little String Theories and Holography

TL;DR

This paper investigates the holographic duality of six-dimensional Little String Theories arising from heterotic fivebranes, comparing spectrum calculations with dualities and constructing new duals and theories.

Contribution

It provides spectrum analysis, duality comparisons, and constructs new holographic duals and Little String Theories with specific global symmetries.

Findings

Spectrum matches Type I-heterotic duality predictions

Constructed holographic duals near orbifold singularities

Discovered new Little String Theories with Spin(32)/Z_2 or E_8×E_8 symmetry

Abstract

It has been conjectured that Little String Theories in six dimensions are holographic to critical string theory in a linear dilaton background. We test this conjecture for theories arising on the worldvolume of heterotic fivebranes. We compute the spectrum of chiral primaries in these theories and compare with results following from Type I-heterotic duality and the AdS/CFT correspondence. We also construct holographic duals for heterotic fivebranes near orbifold singularities. Finally we find several new Little String Theories which have Spin(32)/Z_2 or E_8 \times E_8 global symmetry but do not have a simple interpretation either in heterotic or M-theory.