arXiv research

A compact oriented 4-manifold is defined to be of ``superconformal simple type'' if certain polynomials in the basic classes (constructed using the Seiberg-Witten invariants) vanish identically. We show that all known 4-manifolds of $b_2^+>1$ are of superconformal simple type, and that the numerical invariants of 4-man…

We show that the smooth geometry of a hyperbolic 3-manifold emerges from a classical spin system defined on a 2d discrete lattice, and moreover show that the process of this "dimensional oxidation" is equivalent with the dimensional reduction of a supersymmetric gauge theory from 4d to 3d. More concretely, we propose a…

Proposes a new effective central charge for 3d N=2 theories.

Superconformal geometries discussed in various spacetime dimensions using local supertwistor bundles.

Constructs local superconformal algebras on supermanifolds.

The correlation functions of supersymmetric gauge theories on a four-manifold X can sometimes be expressed in terms of topological invariants of X. We show how the existence of superconformal fixed points in the gauge theory can provide nontrivial information about four-manifold topology. In particular, in the example …

We construct manifestly superconformal field theories in six dimensions which contain a non-Abelian tensor multiplet. In particular, we show how principal 3-bundles over a suitable twistor space encode solutions to these self-dual tensor field theories via a Penrose-Ward transform. The resulting higher or categorified …

We study 4d superconformal indices for a large class of N=1 superconformal quiver gauge theories realized combinatorially as a bipartite graph or a set of "zig-zag paths" on a two-dimensional torus T^2. An exchange of loops, which we call a "double Yang-Baxter move", gives the Seiberg duality of the gauge theory, and t…

Dualities in deformed N=2 SCFTs from link monodromy on D3-brane states.

A new algebraic method extracts symmetry anomalies from 5D SCFTs.

We prove a general uniformization theorem for N=2 superconformal and N=1 superanalytic DeWitt super-Riemann surfaces, showing that in general an N=2 superconformal (resp. N=1 superanalytic) DeWitt super-Riemann surface is N=2 superconformally (resp., N=1 superanalytically) equivalent to a manifold with transition funct…

The paper describes superconformal structures on super Riemann surfaces using fatgraphs.

We show that the superconformal symmetries of the (1,1) sigma model decompose into a set of more refined symmetries when the target space admits projectors $P_{\pm}$, and the orthogonal complements $Q_{\pm}$, covariantly constant with respect to the two natural torsionful connections $\nabla^{(\pm)}$ that arise in the …

New mathematical proposal for TQFTs using TMF-modules.

Superconformal surfaces in Euclidean space are the ones for which the ellipse of curvature at any point is a nondegenerate circle. They can be characterized as the surfaces for which a well-known pointwise inequality relating the intrinsic Gauss curvature with the extrinsic normal and mean curvatures, due to Wintgen (\…

We show how to construct an N=1 superconformal vertex algebra (SCVA) from any Riemannian manifold. When the Riemannian manifold has special holonomy groups, we discuss the extended supersymmetry. When the manifold is complex or Kähler, we also generalize the construction to obtain N=2 SCVA's. We study the BRST cohomolo…

Computes knot groups for torus links using Seifert-van Kampen theorem.

It is shown that a superconformal surface with arbitrary codimension in flat Euclidean space has a (necessarily unique) dual superconformal surface if and only if the surface is S-Willmore, the latter a well-known necessary condition to allow a dual as shown by Ma \cite{ma}. Duality means that both surfaces envelope th…

We give an explicit construction of any simply-connected superconformal surface $φ\colon M^2\to \R^4$ in Euclidean space in terms of a pair of conjugate minimal surfaces $g,h\colon M^2\to\R^4$. That $φ$ is superconformal means that its ellipse of curvature is a circle at any point. We characterize the pairs $(g,h)$ of …

This is the written version of a talk given on 1 July 2009 at the XXV Max Born Symposium: the Planck Scale, held in Wroclaw, Poland. I review the possible transverse geometries to supersymmetric M2-brane configurations and discuss the representation-theoretic description of their conjectured dual superconformal Chern-S…

New $G_2$-holonomy manifolds from 5d N=1 theories domain walls.

We decompose the de Rham Laplacian on Sasaki-Einstein manifolds as a sum over mostly positive definite terms. An immediate consequence are lower bounds on its spectrum. These bounds constitute a supergravity equivalent of the unitarity bounds in dual superconformal field theories. The proof uses a generalization of Kah…

In this paper we show that all totally real superconformal minimal tori in $CP^2$ correspond with doubly-periodic finite gap solutions of the Tzitzeica equation $ω_{z{\overline z}}=e^{-2ω}-e^ω$ Using the results on the Tzitzeica equation in integrable system theory, we describe explicitly all these tori by Prym-theta…

We demonstrate the agreement between the Higgs branches of two N=2 theories proposed by Argyres and Seiberg to be S-dual, namely the SU(3) gauge theory with six quarks, and the SU(2) gauge theory with one pair of quarks coupled to the superconformal theory with E_6 flavor symmetry. In mathematical terms, we demonstrate…

We define a notion of stability for chiral ring of four dimensional N=1 theory by introducing test chiral rings and generalized a maximization. We conjecture that a chiral ring is the chiral ring of a superconformal field theory if and only if it is stable. We then study N=1 field theory derived from D3 branes probing …

Researchers link vertex algebras to non-Kähler solutions of the Hull-Strominger system.

We propose a method to assign non-unitary TQFTs to certain SCFTs, deriving bounds and examples.

We show that for every positive curvature Kahler-Einstein manifold in dimension 2n there is a countably infinite class of associated Sasaki-Einstein manifolds X_{2n+3} in dimension 2n+3. When n=1 we recover a recently discovered family of supersymmetric AdS_5 x X_5 solutions of type IIB string theory, while when n=2 we…

Local supertwistors help study 6D conformal supergravity.

The dynamics of an N=4 spinning particle in a curved background is described using the N=4 superfield formalism. The $SU(2)_{local}\times SU(2)_{global}$ N=4 superconformal symmetry of the particle action requires the background to be a real "Kähler-like" manifold whose metric is generated by a sigma-model superpotenti…

We present a countably infinite number of new explicit co-homogeneity one Sasaki-Einstein metrics on S^2 x S^3, in both the quasi-regular and irregular classes. These give rise to new solutions of type IIB supergravity which are expected to be dual to N=1 superconformal field theories in four-dimensions with compact or…

We show that the SO(3) monopole cobordism formula from Feehan and Leness (2002) implies that all smooth, closed, oriented four-manifolds with $b^1=0$ and $b^+\geq 3$ and odd with Seiberg-Witten simple type satisfy the superconformal simple type condition defined by Marino, Moore, and Peradze (1999) This implies the low…

In this thesis we investigate a new formalism for supergeometry which focuses on the categorical properties of the theory. This approach is our main tool in the subsequent investigation of a global analytic approach to the construction of super Teichmueller spaces. These results should be of importance to various other…

The geometry arising from Michelson & Strominger's study of N=4B supersymmetric quantum mechanics with superconformal D(2,1;alpha)-symmetry is a hyperKaehler manifold with torsion (HKT) together with a special homothety. It is shown that different parameters alpha are related via changes in potentials for the HKT targe…

Lectures on M-theory's higher structures, from local to global.

We describe rules for building 2d theories labeled by 4-manifolds. Using the proposed dictionary between building blocks of 4-manifolds and 2d N=(0,2) theories, we obtain a number of results, which include new 3d N=2 theories T[M_3] associated with rational homology spheres and new results for Vafa-Witten partition fun…

New geometric approach realizes 5D bulk theories with 4D edge modes.

We study Wilson-'t Hooft loop operators in a class of N=2 superconformal field theories recently introduced by Gaiotto. In the case that the gauge group is a product of SU(2) groups, we classify all possible loop operators in terms of their electric and magnetic charges subject to the Dirac quantization condition. We t…

We study a family of fermionic extensions of the Camassa-Holm equation. Within this family we identify three interesting classes: (a) equations, which are inherently hamiltonian, describing geodesic flow with respect to an H^1 metric on the group of superconformal transformations in two dimensions, (b) equations which …

We identify a large class R of three-dimensional N=2 superconformal field theories. This class includes the effective theories T_M of M5-branes wrapped on 3-manifolds M, discussed in previous work by the authors, and more generally comprises theories that admit a UV description as abelian Chern-Simons-matter theories w…

To pave the way for the journey from geometry to conformal field theory (CFT), these notes present the background for some basic CFT constructions from Calabi-Yau geometry. Topics include the complex and Kaehler geometry of Calabi-Yau manifolds and their classification in low dimensions. I furthermore discuss CFT const…

Researchers derive symmetry operators from twistor spinors in curved spacetime.

We propose an explicit formula connecting Donaldson invariants and Seiberg-Witten invariants of a 4-manifold of simple type via Nekrasov's deformed partition function for the N=2 SUSY gauge theory with a single fundamental matter. This formula is derived from Mochizuki's formula, which makes sense and was proved when t…

We develop semistrict higher gauge theory from first principles. In particular, we describe the differential Deligne cohomology underlying semistrict principal 2-bundles with connective structures. Principal 2-bundles are obtained in terms of weak 2-functors from the Cech groupoid to weak Lie 2-groups. As is demonstrat…

We review the map between hypercomplex manifolds that admit a closed homothetic Killing vector (i.e. `conformal hypercomplex' manifolds) and quaternionic manifolds of 1 dimension less. This map is related to a method for constructing supergravity theories using superconformal techniques. An explicit relation between th…

Three-dimensional N=2 superconformal field theories are constructed by compactifying M5-branes on three-manifolds. In the infrared the branes recombine, and the physics is captured by a single M5-brane on a branched cover of the original ultraviolet geometry. The branch locus is a tangle, a one-dimensional knotted subm…

This is the sixth in a series of papers constructing examples of special Lagrangian m-folds in C^m. We present a construction of special Lagrangian cones in C^3 involving two commuting o.d.e.s, motivated by the first two papers of the series. Then we generalize it to a construction of non-conical special Lagrangian 3-f…

We use the conformal invariance and the holographic correspondence to fully specify the dependence of entanglement entropy on the extrinsic geometry of the 2d surface $Σ$ that separates two subsystems of quantum strongly coupled ${\mathcal{N}}=4$ SU(N) superconformal gauge theory. We extend this result and calculate en…